


I Was Far From Indifferent To You

by adiostoreadoormat (choicescarfsylveon)



Series: TIBK [2]
Category: Homestuck
Genre: Alternate Universe - High School, Bro's Neglectful And Like...Bro...But Not Physically Abusive, Family, Hacking, Happy Ending, Hate to Love, Humanstuck, M/M, Oscar Wilde - Freeform, Recreational Drug Use, Underage Drinking
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-04-03
Updated: 2019-05-16
Packaged: 2020-01-04 04:54:24
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 57,676
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18336590
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/choicescarfsylveon/pseuds/adiostoreadoormat
Summary: Your sudden love for Karkat Vantas is a psychological phenomenon of no small interest.Dave’s POV ofThe Importance of Being Karkat





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Hello again! Back in The Valley with Dave's perspective this time, though I'm ending it farther in the future than the prequel. Many of the big structural plot points are the same as TIBK, but Dave has his own journey to go on, his own wounds to heal from, with both his chosen and biological family.
> 
> Title from the prose of Mr. Wilde once again. Every quote I use between sections here is lifted from "The Picture Of Dorian Gray," "Lady Windermere's Fan," and of course "Earnest."
> 
> This is my first time writing literally anything resembling DaveJohn and it's weirdly growing on me. But the DaveKat is still strongest with this one.

 

 

“Everything in moderation, including moderation.”

  

 

Your name is Dave Strider, and you don’t need an introduction. Pretty much everyone knows who you are.

 

Okay, so that’s an exaggeration. But your Bro has been famous for a penultimate number of reasons most of your life, so it can feel like that given your association. He’s been here in the Valley since you were six, and despite coming up into high society Hollywood culture on the backs of some sketchy porn films you don’t wanna know the names of, Bro Strider has become the $300,000 a year producer, sometimes tattoo artist and stone cold fucking maverick that you used to dream you wanted to be. The guy’s not around for much of your personal life, sure, never was once you moved here – once he started producing for rappers and pop artists so big you can’t even mention their _names_ here, he took off on jets from Los Angeles to Dubai to who knows where the fuck else and rarely back - but that’s water under the bridge.

 

Also water under the bridge is the fact that Dirk’s home in the Valley right now. No big deal, you just missed him with every inch of your soul. He’s been home since the start of August, closing out his long summer. He’s about to start his junior year at a little humble trove called the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, ever heard of it? Right now, he’s showing you the upgrades to his Spectacles that sure a lot of other rich people own, but that you and your brother have sort of made a trademark out of yourselves. It’s not working properly at the moment, but Dirk’s current project will allow him to blink his instructions to the reactive lenses of the hi tech shades. He’s showing you this feat in your glamorous kitchen, where Jake is currently making breakfast and thank god Dirk’s quasi-British soulmate/your adoptive brother is here too. You haven’t had a home cooked meal by him in what feels like forever.

 

“Can you guys like, not leave me here with the robots ever again?” You say it as soon as Jake puts down a plate of fried eggs and heaps of bacon and waffles in front of you, almost embarrassed for your burst of sentimentality but also not because being afraid of your feelings is _so_ last year, you’ve decided recently. “They cook for me but like, everything comes out with this weird metallic taste, like I’m not sure if they’re sticking their hands in everything they make or maybe cryin’ their liquid metal tears into the pots because they know they’re doomed to lives as maids to human overlords.”

 

“Okay,” Dirk says, triangle shaped Spectacles back on his face. “I’ll just drop out of school. You can let them know why, say it was urgent.”

 

“Cool yeah, ‘sorry guys I know he’s a genius and has like a six point eighteen GPA and is singlehandedly coding his way out of Earth’s inevitable apocalypse, but I need him and his boyfriend here for hugs. XOXO, Dave Strider.’”

 

Jake chuckles. “By jove, don’t tell me that you’ve been quote, ironically watching Gossip Girl again, unquote.”

 

“I unironically fuckin’ love that show, and it’s not just because I’d like to break off a piece of Penn Badgley aka Dan Humphrey’s fine ass and eat _that_ for breakfast instead. Oh, wait, did I tell y’all Dan actually turns out to be Gossip Girl the whole time? And Serena’s dumbass _still_ marries him.”

 

“You just spoiled the TV moment I’ve been looking forward to for a decade.” Dirk says it as Jake comes over and drops a piece of bacon into his mouth. He says, still chewing, ripping half of the bacon strip with his hand, “Your homoerotic inclination to this man has nothing to do with his resemblance to our friend by the name of John, I’m assuming.”

 

“What the fuck, he looks nothing like Egbert. He has dimples and curly hair and is also tan but white, what does that have to do with anything?”

 

Dirk and Jake share a look, and Jake’s withholding laughter.

 

“And anyway, I’m back with Terezi again.” You aren’t sure how you feel about that though, and it’s making your stomach churn around the food.

 

“How’s that going,” Dirk says.

 

“It’s – you know how it is with girls.”

 

“He doesn’t -” “I don’t -” Jake and Dirk say in unison.

 

You clam up at that, figure it’s time to stop spilling your lip before you say any more embarrassing shit in front of them. Though it’s not like you need to explain said embarrassing shit.  Dirk and Jake can read you better than anyone, given that they’ve known and observed you your whole life.

 

Speaking of people you’ve basically known your whole life -

 

“Hey guys!” John comes strolling into the kitchen then, thin tank top and khaki shorts and holy fuck, even with the pit hair long enough to braid, those golden arms have been looking delectable lately. Goddamn it Dave it is too early for gay obtrusive thoughts about people you shouldn’t be gay for.

 

It’s noon. It’s still too early.

 

“What’s up,” Dirk says to John, “we totally weren’t just talking about you.”

 

“Ha ha.” John slaps Jake on the back in the greeting and then helps himself to an ungodly pile of food. Where does it go? He so didn’t hear the Penn Badgley comparison, did he?

 

“So what are we up to today?” John says, sitting beside you at the island counter.

 

“Well Dirk and Jake here just got off their plane descendin’ from the land of the snow and ice so we’re gonna get them right fuckin’ high and sunburned out by the pool.”

 

“Massachusetts doesn’t snow in the summer,” Jake says, “you do know that, right?”

 

You spend all afternoon out by the pool in the one hundred degree heat, smoking and doing tricks into the water off the rock slide (and you were just kidding about getting sunburned, you and Dirk use medicated 90 SPF sunscreen due to your moderate albinism). Terezi comes over later, and you’ve always loved how easily her jokester self fits in with you and your clan. She’s one of the boys, except not because she’s a girl and a wicked hot one at that, but she holds her own, nailing John’s personality and all the things that make him annoying to the wall so well that you, Dirk and Jake constantly bow at her playful slayage.

 

Though, she seems to be a little sad today. It’s only you who notices this, because she puts on a good enough front in front of your family. As the sun is about to set, Dirk, Jake and John go back inside for a minute, and she pulls you aside to talk. Sits across from you on one of the wicker lounge chairs, her black hair dripping, red sunglasses over her opaque eyes.

 

And she breaks up with you.

 

She says it’s because she still isn’t over Karkat, and this revelation brings you both pain and relief. For one, she has always been too intense for you – you said that being afraid of your feelings is so last year, but it’s gonna take you while to actually stop being afraid of them, you reckon- but two, she just doesn’t take any bullshit, and you’ve built your entire guarded persona around bullshit.

 

But also, this thing she has with Karkat is – it hurts you to look at them. Not because you’re jealous – they’re freshmen-soon-to-be-sophomores and you’re a junior-soon-to-be-senior and you have other things going for you anyway, maybe – but because they’re so obviously pining for each other, but Karkat can’t get his head out of his depression’s ass according to Terezi, and Terezi won’t tell him how she feels ‘cause she’s afraid that he’ll just self-loathe his way out of reciprocating. It’s like a teen angst YA novel, it makes you cringe as much as it makes you wanna sit them down all therapist style and say, “hey y’all, you’re only fifteen and sixteen respectively so this _feels_ like the end of the world, but it ain’t, and just looking at you two makes my heart wanna break into a million tiny little pieces for reasons I don’t even understand, so talk it out? Thanks, I’m dying over here.”

 

Terezi cries as she tells you. This just makes the whole conniption of things you’re feeling even worse, because you don’t do well with tears. You haven’t cried in four years. She also says that Karkat doesn’t want her, and you know that ain’t the whole of it, but actions speak louder than words, and from what you’ve heard, Karkat wasn’t in a place where he could love her with his actions, before it ended.

 

It makes you hate him a little bit for hurting her, but hate yourself even more because you’ve just been _sitting here,_ letting her fuddle her time and be your girlfriend again even though you know it’s too complicated to be happening right now. For you, too.

 

“It’s okay, dude, really.” You squeeze her hand when she’s done explaining. “I mean, I’ll miss you and this sucks, but I’m actually kinda – relieved, a little bit.”

 

Terezi lets go of your hand slowly. “Why are you relieved?”

 

“Because, I – I think you know, I’ve told you about it, I’ve been more into dudes for a while now, and don’t get me wrong, you are _gorgeous_ and so dope and the coolest chick that I’ve been friends with in this cow town, but I kinda – I dunno. Wasn’t really feeling it, last couple times we made out, and neither were you.”

 

Terezi stiffens. “You weren’t?”

 

Shit. “You _were?"_

 

“I asked you first.”

 

“Because I can clearly recall your mouth going dead fish, you pushing me off of you and saying you wanted to play Tony Hawk instead which, don’t get me wrong times two, I’m always down for some Tony Hawk and watching you glitch out the characters - “

 

“Why didn’t you say anything?”

 

“Why didn’t you?”

 

Terezi doesn’t need to remind you that she asked you first.

 

“Okay.” You wish you could hold her hand again, but that’s probably the wrong move here. “Listen – ”

 

“I’m tired.” Terezi reaches for her cane on the ground, props it up before her. “And I did not know that you were imagining I was a boy this entire time.”

 

“Whoa, hold on, did I say that?”

 

“You were implying – ”

 

“That is so not what I meant, I mean it, Terezi, you are so beautiful – “

 

“Like I said, I’m tired.”

 

She goes then, barely nodding the cane – she knows the way out by memory – and you sit with your head in your hands, cursing yourself. Today really has been a day of your inappropriate ramblings not doing their thing and staying inside your head where they belong.

 

John comes back outside moments later. He’s still damp from the pool, holding one of your bongs full of a fresh bowl of greens. You need a head change right now like sin, so when he hands it to you, you take a fat rip.

 

“Are you okay?” John asks as you hand the glass piece over to him. “You guys looked like you were having a serious talk.”

 

“Yeah, Terezi broke up with me.”

 

“Oh.” John doesn’t look surprised, and this gives you questions. “Did she say why?”

 

“Sounds like it’s mostly to do with Karkat.”

 

“Didn’t she cheat on him so she could be with you?”

 

“Yep.”

 

And silence passes between you. A few more times, you hand the bong off back and forth. Pretty soon, the high you’re feeling makes you wanna laugh about what just happened, and _that’s_ wrong. But this giddy feeling won’t last. You know it won’t, it never does. Still, you need something to neutralize you.

 

“Well, look at the bright side!” John presses his thigh flush with yours, nudges you in the ribcage, and you feel warm all over. “Now you get to spend your senior year bro-ing it up in the most platonic fashion with yours truly.”

 

“Oh, shit, I’m so honored for this once in a lifetime opportunity. I’d like to thank the Academy, God, my father figure - “

 

“Shut up.”

 

John leans into you again, and you watch him take another hit, slowly releasing curls of smoke from his chapped pink lips and god, you wanna shotgun him like you did two years ago the last time you -

 

“What?” John says.

 

You so did not just say that out loud, you so did not -

 

“Nothin’.”

 

You must not have, because John is smiling like all’s well.

 

“C’mere,” he says.

 

Okay, so maybe you did.

 

You take his next hit into your mouth, the feeling of his lips on yours and the heat of the smoke along your tongue sending waves of head rush and _fuck me John_ down to every part of you – he rights your jaw with his fingers, and it’s so familiar and barely there and sexy that your heart feels like it’s gonna jump from your chest, land in a bloody splatter at his feet.

 

The smoke passed, John pulls back. You keep your eyes closed for a few seconds, savoring him. He can’t tell, behind your shades.

 

“There,” John says. You open your eyes to find him waggling his brows, so fucking goofy and killing the vibe, if there even was one on his end. “Something to think about later instead of jacking off to that weird writer guy from Gossip Girl.”

 

“Fuck off.”

 

Dirk and Jake are returning from the main house now, carrying a case of special brownies and their dab rig. It occurs to you from the fact that the entire back wall of your house is made of glass – and you know they’ve been out here a while since your backyard takes a cool minute to cross – that they probably just saw your kiss occur. Again. Fuck.

 

John shoots up and yells at Jake that “the last one in the pool has a fake British accent!” and Jake goes barreling after him. They cannonball in, splashing loud, and Dirk comes around to the counter next to your chair, starts setting up the rig. His shades obscure whether or not he’s side-eying you. He probably is.

 

“You ever gonna talk to him about it?” he asks you.

 

“Nope.”

 

 

“No man is rich enough to buy back his past.”

 

 

You started Sweet Bro and Hella Jeff, which took off more than you were expecting, when you were ten years old, and ever since, you’ve been in an online spotlight. The Strider name does carry its weight, though you are a talented artist and musician yourself. Now you’re in gossipy teenage tabloids now and then, some female and gay bloggers gushing about your latest YouTube show, or what you’re wearing at one of Bro’s shows, or the way you ripped Kanye East a new asshole on your _hip hop ain’t dead, it just hasn’t met me yet_ blog when the joker posted a selfie wearing a MAGA hat. It’s flattering, all the attention, but sometimes you wonder why a million people have checked you out in various ways.

 

You're seventeen now, and though much of your life is unrealistically affluent, mostly you're still just a normal kid trying to make sense of your crazy life with Dirk, Jake, Bro and John. You and Dirk have always been close, but you're not the kind of brothers who show it in obvious ways. When push comes to shove, you’re there, in a fight to defend each other or if he needs someone to pester at three in the morning about a government conspiracy theory or the way you both hide beneath layers of sarcasm and jokes in the hopes that what’s wrong with you will get smothered to death beneath it. But he doesn’t push you to act, and neither you him. It’s sort of your deal. He grew up with Bro, who snuffed any healthy reaction to emotional trauma down by just being the way he is, so. You two get each other.

 

But living here in Bro's house without Dirk around, or Jake, has been two years of neglect and alienation. Bro hasn’t talked to you or seen you in a month at this point in time, and this isn't even the longest you've gone without him. There’s a mansion of space and a pile of money beneath you, but still, you feel everything’s unstable.

  
What are you going to do in the future? You sit with you laptop by the pool and play [the latest song you're working on](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nkekhC7wDlw) again, fine tuning it, thinking about the fanbase waiting for it. You have always been doing this DJ-rapper shit ironically, even though you genuinely love music making on its own. But what about an actual plan, your career and adulting and what not? You've achieved enough success as @davestrider even without your comics and blogs, but you haven't worked a gig since you were fourteen. SBHJ feels more like an obligation lately, and your YouTube show just generates thousands of Twitter, Snapcrap, and Instagrub followers who don’t really know you and never will. Your friends are all off to universities next fall – Meenah a Princeton legacy, John trolling on to pre-medical school somewhere – but you could ask Bro tomorrow if he could swing you a job at a music production studio and you'd be worked into the empire with ease. You’d make more money doing that than you’d be chugging redbull and vodka in a coed dorm somewhere in Minnesota.

 

Still. You don’t want stardom, that’s not why you’re doing this. If anything, this online fame stint has all been to show your Bro that this celebrity circlejerk he wastes his life on is so stupid, even you can do it well half-trying. He doesn’t even care that you’re on a webcam in front of strangers more than is probably smart, pretty constantly getting DM’d by secretaries of state governments asking you delete tweets. He says he thinks your rebellious work is “cool,” but takes absolutely no interest in it other than that.

 

He doesn’t care that you have zero supervision whatsoever day to day. That sometimes, the drugs and the parties you oversee when he leaves you are making you lonelier than all hell. It’s a lot of responsibility, making sure his massive property is organized and sustained, so sue you if you want to get back at him and his house sometimes with a little old fashioned teenaged chaos. A lot of that, really. Not that being alone the morning after, watching the robots sweep the mess from the ragers, has ever made you feel any better.

 

You're always waiting on Bro’s return. Even though it takes months, even when he does come home to grab a granola bar or whatever the fuck, asks you how school's going without even gauging the answer, and then dips once more. Waiting on him, waiting on him. Is this what you’ll do your whole life?

 

You have very hazy plans to fly to Europe and rich people backpack after you graduate with a C- average. Do a little acid in hostels with hot guys and “find yourself,” Jack Kerouac style. What’s Bro gonna do about that? Not shit, far as you can tell. Maybe he’ll ask you to send postcards ironically. Maybe he’ll forget you ever left.

 

  

“To influence a person is to give him one's own soul.”

 

 

 " _As a member of the male species, I can attest to this shit. Basically straight men are driven by two things, how they measure up to other men and how they measure up to other men’s perception of what females’ perception of them is. All of this is done without magically realizing that guess what, you self absorbed deadbeats? If you want to know what women want, maybe you should fucking speak to them. Talk about a wild concept!_

_“Which reminds me. Last night at 4 a.m. Quadrant user tatsandedm420 started a monogamous ship between himself and user pleasenodickpics. Pleasenodickpics responded by shipping tatsandedm420 with at least fifty other users in their network, all of whom confirmed these illicit affairs. Apparently tatsandedm420, aside from having terrible taste in music and probably overall life choices, has made out with more people in the last week than yours truly ever will._

_“Jokes aside, I get it. Infidelity looks cool in movies and having cameras in our faces all the time makes us feel like we’re fundamentally useless and unlikable unless we’re wanted by thousands of people at once. But you know what I miss? I miss the days when walking up to someone in person and telling them how you felt about them wasn’t such a fucking ordeal. Or at least something you guys didn’t express so much anxiety about. When we weren’t all hiding behind these projections and copy pasted pick up lines, and all our mistakes weren’t publicly re-traceable as part of our timelines._

_“I miss when love was just. Simple. When it wasn’t an algorithm or a personality quiz, and when people were just. People. Living in a 3D world, passing hand written notes under the table, smelling roses together in the park. Actual roses with soft, velvet petals, and actual girlfriends with soft, loving hands.”_

 

Karkat’s radio broadcast, dropped ceremoniously by Terezi over the school PA, serves your ass to you on a platter covered in garnish and barbequed scorch, with no warning.

 

You’re stuck specifically on this line, as you wait out the rest of homeroom with his voice on repeat in your head: _Basically straight men are driven by two things, how they measure up to other men and how they measure up to other men’s perception of what females’ perception of them is._ What a profound thing for a sixteen year old to understand. And it’s _true._ You know it is, not because you’re straight, but because what he said goes for bi men too. Not _just_ the female perspective, but what men _perceive_ the female perspective to be – they get it wrong all the time. You do, that’s why Terezi’s been avoiding you, because what you said was pretty insensitive – and you have never really been content with yourself and the way you express your sexuality, because you’re always comparing yourself to other men. Dirk, your Bro, Jake, John – a lot of dudes. A lot. It’s never really about hypothetical acceptance from feminine qualities, is it? It’s all men’s cyclical circlejerk of patriarchal self-imposed expectations and Karkat just fucking owned you on a Monday morning, and he doesn’t even know it.

 

He passes by you in the hallway just after second period. He looks the way he always does, frowning, baggy sweatshirt, brown skin all glowing effortlessly and shit. His hair is so tangled-curly you think your fingers might get stuck if you ever tried messing with it. He doesn’t see you watching him, but you smell his - what is that cologne? Mixed with probably coconut oil, he smells nice does he always smell so nice? It catches you off guard, but he always smells like that you guess but you aren’t exactly fixing to sniff him when he comes into view usually. Usually you aren’t looking at him at all, because of the whole “his thing with Terezi makes me feel things” thing.

 

_Infidelity looks cool in movies and having cameras in our faces all the time makes us feel like we’re fundamentally useless and unlikable unless we’re wanted by thousands of people at once -_

 

_When we weren’t all hiding behind these projections and copy pasted pick up lines, and all our mistakes weren’t publicly re-traceable as part of our timelines -_

 

_Actual roses with soft, velvet petals, and actual girlfriends with soft, loving hands -_

 

Describing his ex's hands as loving when he goddamn well knew she was listening was pretty bold, too. The whole thing was bold. You aren’t sure how many listeners he has (you certainly didn’t know he was a whole ass aspiring radio personality until today) but he clearly has a system working – from the inch-by-inch drag of Cindr that had you hanging off every insult to the chime-ins from his cohosts and the way that he ended his story with a bow – dude’s got skills.

 

People are talking about him at least a third of the whole day. Meenah especially loved his virulent tirade, and you know if she’s really into a thing, people will latch onto it just because she’s her. You also hear her ragging on Kankri for “hidin' your talented lil bro in a fuckton of coral reef and makin’ us all think he was lame,” and well, it’s not like you also haven’t been a small contributing factor to that. It’s not even like you actively make fun of him to your school kin anymore - technically - because there’s no reason to. Really, you mostly only did it to Terezi and John privately when you were a kid because it was easy hearsay. Not an excuse, not at all, but you were insecure, and kids are mean when they’re insecure.

 

Late that afternoon, you sit by your pool in a lounge chair and tinker at [more of your music](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g3eGjbzmcuE) on your box. All you can see is the place Terezi sat on one of these chairs, crying throughout your conversation. They must not have gotten back together, since you can imagine having his voice broadcast like that to everyone at school is the kid’s worst nightmare. Why did she do that him? Is there more where it came from? This 8bit track you’re doing has been stuck for over a week, so you give it a break, take your laptop back in and ascend the grand stairs to your room.

 

Listen to the rest of his archived broadcasts, all of them, that you can in one sitting anyway, pretty easily able to locate thequadrant.com via Google. Every one of KK’s programs are just as scathing, professionally mixed, hilarious, and heartfelt as the one you heard this morning. You’ve never heard him _talk so much._ He’s a riot. There’s also a good year’s worth of material here – he’s based out of the Ensena Community Radio Station, that’s forty five minutes out, does he actually commute every night?

 

“ _Look, I’m not saying that I’m never gonna get a divorce.”_ This one’s dated on Valentine’s day of this year. _“Knowing my own sparkling personality, I’ll probably have five or six of them racked up by the time I’m fucking incontinent. But if I can help it? Like britneyspearscansuckit just said - I really, really only wanna do this once. I guess I’ve been sold on the soulmate narrative that so many classical romances embedded in my brain when I was too young and impressionable to realize that you’re gonna meet a lot of people, and they aren’t all gonna be meant for you. Still, I’m gonna be careful with my heart – and all of you should too – because you only get one. Better not to just bruise it and scar it on some pointless hormonal deep dive.”_

 

His voice, too – raspy and sniggering laughter, full of spark and intonation. You are so screwed, David Strider, you have no idea what to do with this information, where it’s being logged and why it’s doing things to your pathetic little heart. Listening to his words, you feel both very alone and uniquely understood.

 

All you know is, you’re saddled with feelings for a guy that you don’t know what to do with, and historically, that makes you act in immature ways.

 


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This part coincides with Chapters 2 through 5 of the prequel. I love writing Dave more than I love breathing

 

“I can resist anything except temptation.”

 

 

John comes over late that night ‘cause people joke you’re attached at the hip and well, you kind of are. Tonight you’re utilizing his piano skills slash his easy willingness to follow you down the Internet's rabbit holes, egged on by your Sweet Bro and Hella Jeff followers.

 

Your infamous shitty webcomic’s plotline – if you could call it that – has spiraled out of control the last few years. Now you’re usually just roasting and parodying random people on each page, politicians, celebrities, the drunk old lady you live next to, John. No one is safe. SBHJ’s loyal followers @ the subjects until they see it, and some of their responses are hilarious. Ranging from “what is this trash” and “I DON’T ACTUALLY LOOK LIKE THAT” to “I don’t get it” and “lmao.” You’re surprised how many of them respond to this day. Nylee Gender called your read in which her lips took up an entire panel racist, and you replied that her copious surgeries to make her white ass look Afro-Latina made her racist. She blocked you. So did one of the other Kartrashian sisters. You hoped that didn't spoil Bro's relationship with the family /s.

 

You and John team up to troll the responders who get too self-important because the whole _point_ of Sweet Bro and Hella Jeff is that nothing is serious.

 

John is sitting at his favorite blue keyboard, which he keeps at your house, and scrolling through his Instagrub feed, commenting to you on various girls. You're thinking about the last time you were both as single as you are right now; he tends to dare you that you couldn't bed this person or that person, and you do the same to him, and it becomes a game of body counts you play against each other. Your sophomore year you may have given half the bi guys on the football team head, but John was busy giving head to half the football team’s cheerleader girlfriends, and that wasn’t something you could compete with.

 

“Man, Kelly from Economics should wear a swimsuit every day,” he's saying to you, his voice hitching, and you chuckle. "I mean, _gosh_."

 

“Don't know why you call her 'Kelly from Economics' when we haven't had Econ with her since sophomore year.”

 

"Because, there are a lot of Kelly's at our school! This one is the prettiest though."

 

You ignore him and turn back to your laptop. Finish up the last of forty jpeg compressions on your deep fried panel about Karkat’s Quadrant. Soon as you post it, with a link to the show’s site, your fans report that the Quadrant has a “shipping wall” where people can draw, that they’re about to start defacing it with SBHJ paraphernalia, shitty romcom parodies, and also dicks. You give them the thumbs up. When the episode begins and Karkat acknowledges your traffic bump, you decide to up the ante. Tell your fans that you’re dialing in, that yeah this KK guy really does freak out that hard and that explosively IRL, and you can prove it.

 

Maybe you just want some of that passionate explosiveness directed at you.

 

Karkat hangs up on you in the middle of you and John's impromptu rap masterpiece, which you expected. You're still listening to the rest of the episode, as he fields calls from people across the country, most of them asking for advice about polyamory, still others asking what the point of his show is. You are entirely too focused on listening to his voice, every pitch and every blow, to realize that John has been talking to you and you've entirely missed what he said.

 

"Helloooo, Earth to Dave."

 

"What."

 

You look over at him. He's giving you a knowing smirk. "Why the sudden interest in Karkat, huh? Is it _just_ because Terezi talked about him on the air?"

 

You try to fix your face. "I mean. Mostly I just think it's funny that he gets so pissed off about menial shit. But also."

 

"Also..."

 

"He's the last guy on Earth who'd be interested in me probably. All this shit he talks about being Rico Suave, I kinda wanna know how he'd deal if I put the mack on. Ironically."

 

John snorts. "I _bet_ you couldn't sleep with him."

 

You check him over the rim of your shades. That's another dare from him if you've ever heard it. As if you needed a bet.

 

You smile. "How much?" 

 

 

“Every portrait that is painted with feeling is a portrait of the artist, not of the sitter.”

 

 

Meenah Peixes is the only person at Valley View High who's richer than you. That isn't why you're friends, but you relate to her because of it. Her mom is the CEO of the Condescension fashion empire and her dad is the former CFO of WhatPumpkin. She's been something like your pseudo best friend to John since sixth grade. The only reason you aren't closer is because she's senior class president and thinks your whole not-trying-hard-in-school thing is lame, because she's a badass lesbian who'll always prioritize women over men - and you get that, you respect her because of it - and because, well, John takes up a lot of your time.

 

When you get to lunch on Friday, Meenah sits next to you and enthuses about your SBHJ update last night. She had people over, and apparently they all tuned in for a portion of it. She's always been a fan of your more interactive trolling events.

 

"The poor kid," she's saying, grinning at you, "you bombed him the fuck up. He couldn't even believe how many bitches you sent his way. His show is actually kinda dope though. How many people got the patience to listen to muhfuckers vent about how heartbroken and shit they are all night? Some of what they was sayin' was touchin' enough that even my coldblooded ass was catchin' feelings. I might start listenin' in on the regular for real."

 

"Yeah I mean you know I'd never say it to his face and of course I had to show him up with my superior lyrical dexterity and cover it in layers of irony but. He might know what he's talking about. Maybe."

 

Your smile must be giving it all away. 

 

"You got a fat ass crush on him, huh, Strider."

 

No point in hiding it from Meenah. "Yeah you could say the ass is fat."

 

"I can't really blame you for alladat. It's them damn Vantas genes. Even though Kankri's the worst most sanctimonious fuckin' piece a garbage I ever met, he's still so glubbin' adorable for some reason."

 

You watch Kankri now, sitting across the table with Cronus, and realize how much he and Karkat do look alike. Down to the nervous twitch at the corner of his mouth when he's got resting face, and the black, soul searching eyes. The point being that you would smash both of them gladly. You're much more concerned with his brother though. (Kankri would murder you via sermon if he ever knew you were having this thought.)

 

You crane your head back towards the table where Vantas the younger usually sits. He's there with Rose and Kanaya, and rather conveniently, he's staring into a tablet and typing, paying you no attention. As usual. The Spectacles give you this way of being able to watch people without them knowing. That is  _so_ not as creepy as you just made it sound.

 

The point being that he's got his guard down, and you do feel bad about flustering him and his show so much last night. You would never admit this with any of the other personalities you blow up via SBHJ, but really, in a backhanded way, you drew his likeness in your signature disfigured style because you wanted everyone to pay his greatness attention. Even if half of the people you sent him were just going to clog his phone lines and spam his drawing wall with bloated trash, some of them were probably going to like him a lot. In fact, more than half of the calls he took from new people last night were overwhelmingly positive, even if his successive on-air panic didn't demonstrate he knew this.

 

Still, the way you let him know this shouldn't have been backhanded. You construct intricate rituals. The rap was too mean-spirited, you didn't have to subtly diss the way he "lost" Terezi to you, or say his first name. There's a reason he goes by KK and doesn't show his face. You don't think it's true at all that, as you styled freely, "he gets no play." You're the one who wants to _be_ in the play. All up in it, sweet and all night long and touching his hair maybe, telling him you've got the full blown yaois all of a sudden.

 

This is stupid. It just occurred to you two days ago - kind of - that he's sneaky hot and a total catch. Still, you wouldn't be you if you didn't try to bat for a man who's a challenge. Impossible maybe, given that he hates you.

 

Which is why five minutes later you're inviting him, Rose, and Kanaya to your back to school party. In person, right at their table. He's staring at you like you've got three heads and cursing you out in eloquent fashion for "wanting nothing to do with me unless it’s pissing around hiding behind a fucking computer," and okay wig. But when you take your shades off and look him in the eye, you see the betrayal on his face; frustrated little pinch of the brow, his gaze softening, like maybe he looks up to you and has wanted you to see him. That's not how you want him to think about you at all though, and it's probably not all that's going on in his look. But he replaces it with that angry scowl as soon as you re-equip your Spectacles.

 

You leave him with your invite, hope he bites.

 

After school, you start setting up for the party; Dirk and Jake carrying furniture out of danger's way and you raiding Bro's massive walk-in liquor cabinet to perfect the family Jungle Juice recipe. John is on his way with the mixers and chasers because none of you felt like going to Super Saver. He calls you around 6, after he's done with practice, with an update.

 

“Thank you for calling the Strider abortion clinic, where no fetus can defeat us. We have a special on twins today. How may I help you?”

 

_"Duuuude, gross. I just spent the last three hours getting grass stained, and sweaty, and jumping through tires. I do not want to hear about dead babies!"_

 

"'Your loss."

 

 _"Anyway, do you guys really need_ three hundred _bottles of Five Hour Energy for the stuff? I don't know, that sounds a little excessive. And how am I supposed to carry all of this?!"_

 

"Oh, John. We specifically directed you to Super Saver because they are a warehouse and warehouses sell in bulk. They have it in cases of fifty, that's only six. Work those sweaty hammer arms and push it all on a platform cart like a goddamn man."

 

_"Bluh, whatever. You guys seriously owe me for this! I call first dibs on shots from the giant slide-y ice sculpture thing."_

 

"You thought Dirk was serious about getting that? It's a back to school party, not an inaugural ball."

 

_"...You are a constant disappointment to me, Dave."_

 

He says it like his Dad, spot on, and you laugh.

 

"I know. And that's why you love me."

 

When the whole team is assembled later on, Jake texts Bro to ask if he'll get his main connect to set you up for tonight. The guy comes by the house, delivering four fat blunts rolled in wax. Bro's treat. Score. The ounce of cocaine you get on your own; Cronus Ampora may be the worst guy to ever grace the planet, and that's saying something given your guardian, but whoever he gets his blow from is a goddamn prodigy.

 

There are probably two or three hundred people here tonight, one of the biggest soirées you've ever thrown. Dirk and Jake's graduated classmates who are still in town for the summer roll through as well as too many current students. You'd care more that half this audience is probably too young to be here, and that some freshmen managed to get copies of the invites, but you've got too good of a cross-fade to deny people entry to the revel. The robots take scans of everyone who enters, that should be enough security slash data to scour over if someone does something _too_ illegal. The bar is pretty low.

 

You've almost forgotten that you should be looking out for Karkat when he shows up. He drifts into the grand living room followed by Rose and Kanaya, slightly irritated and biting his lip, observing the crowd. You push your shades up into your hair and check him out, hoping he'll feel your eyes on him, and he does. To your surprise, he hate-stares you back and meets your gaze steadily, vengeful and searing and point blank, like _'Yeah bitch, I'm here, I showed up. So what? Your move.'_ You swerve off the couch and head towards them, blunt in hand as a peace offering. 

 

“Greetings, loved ones.” You nod at Rose and Kanaya as Karkat stares daggers at your profile. He looks so fucking good even though he's wearing what he always wears or whatever, though his hair is curlier and lush. You can't even look at him, not when he's looking at you like that. “You two scissor sisters look ravishing this evening.”

 

Rose lowers her eyes at your shirt. “I didn’t know Five Nights at Freddie’s, the artistic feat, was your cup of tea.”

 

“Are you fucking kidding I hated that game, ain’t nothing fun about sitting my ass in a chair getting spooked the fuck out by misbehavin’ robots, that’s my life in this house as it is. I’m wearing it ironically, and because Egbert hates furries.”

 

“Are animatronics technically furries?” Kanaya says.

 

“I suppose the only way to find out, is to mount one," Rose says.

 

“Y’all into reefer?” You take another hit, attempt a pass. “Got this joint fresh from the Bro earlier, presidential shit.”

 

“No thanks.”

 

Karkat finally raises his voice. You can almost hear the _fucking_ between those two words. He is all fire, and you're burning.

 

“I happen to know from a shared friend of ours that you like the devil’s grass, Karkat.”

 

“I like candy and chocolate too, but that doesn’t mean I’m going to accept them from a perv in a sketchy ass van.”

 

“Are you or am I the perv in this situation?”

 

“You, asshole! And also you.”

 

You stare at each other in silence for a moment, the tension stilled. He has probably the most expressive eyes you've ever seen. Damn if looks could kill. Fuck you, you're already dead. You can tell he's thrown off by this unguarded look at your eyes, too; their strange red color startles most, apparently even him.

 

“Come walk with me for a minute,” you say to him.

 

He gets disarmed by that. His breath catches _._

 

“Um." He's recalculating.  _Bingo._ "Why?”

 

“I get it, you’re mad at me about somethin’. Can’t for the life of me imagine what it is.”

 

“Hm, what a righteous convenience that is.”

 

“Come on, I got this drink that’ll smooth things over, I promise. On the house?”

 

You show him how your Spectacles work in the kitchen, watching his eyes widen at the more spectacular of feats, as he sips your drink. Then you start nervous rambling because he's so fucking cute, oversharing your tragic Vegas story from eighth grade in which Dirk, Jake, John and you probably almost died several times on the strip. He's looking at you like he thinks you're crazy, but he's looking, more intense as it goes.

 

He agrees to take a hit from your joint and play King's Cup and Dirty Jenga with Meenah and crew, during which he is silently in shock at most of what goes on: you and everyone else doing bumps of cocaine, Dirk passing off his dab rig for the circle, Eridan chugging a gallon of liquor when he loses the first game. Karkat is then openly gaping at who makes out with who during Jenga, a mixture of scandalized but turned on. You totally sat next to him in case the odds would be in your favor, but now that you're staring at his lips as his mouth falls slightly open at the more laborious displays of people's tongues, you're so nervous to even touch him that you think you might pass out. That's probably also the dank weed.

 

Meenah pesters you when it's almost his and your turn to pull, from where she sits at Karkat's other side.

 

mercurialEmpress [ME] started pestering turntechGodhead [TG] at 00:23:58

ME: i know you tryna hit that love ways or w/e but if i get to do somefin to him im doin it  
TG: rude  
ME: maybe you should see me suckin his thumb or w/e i get as a CHALLENGE n buck up n make a reel move  
TG: look hes just so hot but hes distant okay hes playing it cool like so cool i cant tell if he thinks im hot back  
TG: probably i mean if hate-eyefucking is a thing then GODDAMN i am so getting fucked tonight  
ME: T)(ATS W)(AT IM TALKIN BOUT }8D

 

She gets to do a body shot off him. Lucky, lucky woman. The way you instantly feel a stab of heat low in your gut when she pushes his sweatshirt up, exposing a stretch of brown skin, makes you glad you have dark eyewear on, because damn. The way he shudders as her hands hold his hips to the ground and she licks a stripe down his middle -

 

You have never wanted to be Meenah so badly in your life.

 

And finally, later on in the night, you have him alone on the balcony. He's saying that if you're going to fight him he's ready to push you off the ledge, or something, but there's less fire in his words; he's staring at your pool in amazement, flushing darker by the second, and you're not sure you can do this.

 

"Honestly Terezi's like still pretty into you," you start with, because you know it's true, and he probably doesn't. You need him to have all the information. "When she talked about you like that during announcements, I got kinda thrown and started looking into your show. I didn't know you had this whole thing goin' and I pretty much listened to everything and downloaded all the little podcasts and...yeah. You may or may not have a certain set of skills."

 

He just stares at you, the frustrated and softer way he looked at you this morning returning. He has a moment of recognition - _you're admitting defeat, it's his move_ \- but before he can respond, Dirk is sliding the door open behind you.

 

You turn. You and Dirk share a communicative glance even through two layers of shades. He knows he's interrupting something serious, and you know he knows.

 

“Dude, get in here, someone just broke Bro’s Congolese voodoo statuettes. Also, the foyer window.”

 

“Fucking fuckers.”

 

After the party - you and Dirk kicked out everyone who wasn't an actual friend of the family when property got damaged, though Karkat and Kankri had slipped out before you'd made the announcement - the robots are sweeping up the glass in the foyer, the discarded plastic cups and trash throughout the living room. Several of your closer people - John, Vriska, Tavros, Meenah, Aranea, Porrim - are changing into sweatpants and preparing to crash here for the night slash early morning. Dirk joins you on the patio, where you've been finishing the roach of your joint for the last few minutes. He still has more than half of his leftover. He re-lights it, a nightcap, and you share it.

 

“You and the kid out here," Dirk says eventually. "Smaller Vantas. Is that a thing?”

 

You chuckle, self depreciative. “He practically hates me, so no, I don’t think it’s a thing.”

 

Dirk smiles, a rare occurrence from him. “You want it to be.”

 

“Shrug.”

 

He takes his joint back when you pass it. Then:

 

"I think you should do it."

 

He's breaking the rule of not telling you what you should do, so he must mean it. "Really? Why?"

 

Dirk takes another hit, blowing smoke clouds towards the ceiling.

 

"You should move on."

 

Dirk leaves you with that, as emotional a thing as he can stand to tell you, as well as the rest of his joint. You watch him go inside, through the glass paneled doors; Jake is standing in the darkened foyer waiting for him, and you watch them share a long, meaningful kiss. All you used to want, for most of your life, was to have what they have with John. John comes into the room then, as if on cue, and you watch the three of them dialogue; Jake is circling Dirk's waist and staring at him like he's holding part of his soul.

 

You squeeze your eyes shut, rejecting the feelings trying to sink you. It's going to be a long year.

  

 

“Nothing can cure the soul but the senses.”

 

 

The next morning, you have three lines of cocaine for breakfast. Dirk and Jake flew back to Massachusetts, the house is empty, you do the coke to feel less alone, so it goes. Even though you basically gave the shit away as party favors last night, there's still half an ounce left in your closet. You're not a drug dealer. _Someone's_ just going to have to inhale you all then, aren't they, Mr. Half Ounce? Some have greatness thrust upon them blah blah.

 

You decide to have another party since it's a three day weekend and okay you really can't just sit here and do all this blow. This one will be outside by the pool, low key, just champagne and the hot tub and familiar faces. David's Motherfucking Baptism.

 

You decide to listen to the Quadrant episode from last night. Karkat was high and probably on his way to hungover and he still trucked it out to do his job at two in the morning. Seriously, the kid's a machine. It's from listening that you learn that Jade, one of their oldest listeners, passed away a few months ago. You remember hearing her voice on some of his greatest episodes, how heated and emotional and vibrant his conversations with her were. She was a thoroughgoing character. The way his voice broke when he asked how it happened made something inside you twist into a knot. But he carried on with the rest of the episode with his usual strident poise. 

 

You wonder what he was going to say to you last night. You wonder if you could finish where you left off. You go ahead and add him on Pesterchum since that's something you probably should've done already. You send him your invite and tell him his episode touched you - in your way - log off to clean to the pool, and return to find his response.

 

carcinoGeneticist [CG] started pestering turntechGodhead [TG] at 11:40:16

CG: I REALLY WISH YOU’D STOP LISTENING TO MY SHOW, LIKE THAT IS A THING THAT NEVER SHOULD’VE STARTED AND COULD I TRAVEL IN TIME BACKWARD, I WOULD STOP IT, AS WELL AS QUITE POSSIBLY YOUR BIRTH ONTO THIS WRETCHED, SUFFERING PLANET.

CG: BUT THANKS.

turntechGodhead is offline, auto-reply:  _meet in the trap its going down meet me in the mall its going down meet me in the club its going down anywhere you meet me guaranteed to go down_

CG: THAT SONG IS TERRIBLE.

CG: SEE YOU IF I FEEL LIKE IT

CG: I WON’T

carcinoGeneticist [CG] ceased pestering turntechGodhead [TG] at 11:42:47.

 

It makes you laugh, even if it's a violently worded no. 

 

You spend the afternoon and early evening [working on another song](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0VT77y1knk4), doing a few more bumps, confirming the short guest list for tonight, and waiting around for John to finish up at the first football game of the season. You would go and support him kicking field goals IRL, but it's too hot for all that and school spirit isn't even something you can pretend to do ironically.

 

You pester Terezi to invite her, because you haven't talked to her in a while. She says her eyes and head hurt from her surgery and that’s why she didn’t come last night either. “things arent awkward between us right” you ask, even though they are, and Terezi’s answer is “WH4T DO YOU TH1NK?” You can’t tell if that’s her saying yes or if she’s genuinely asking for your opinion.

 

TG: i cant tell if thats you saying yes or if youre genuinely asking for my opinion  
GC: 1 DONT H4T3 YOU OR 4NYTH1NG L1K3 TH4T  
GC: 1 JUST DONT W4NT TO CR4MP YOUR STYL3, NOW TH4T W3 4R3 3X BOYFR13ND 4ND G1RLFR13ND, 4G41N  
GC: 1T 1S NOT P3RSON4L. 1 ST1LL LOV3 YOU! W3 4R3 ST1LL FR13NDS  
GC: 1 JUST N33D SOM3 H34LTHY SP4C3. 4ND MY 3Y3S R34LLY DO HURT L1K3 4 B1TCH >x[  
GC: 1 4M S331NG SOME3ON3 4NYW4Y  
GC: L1T3R4LLY 4ND SUGG3ST1VL3Y >:]  
GC: NOT K4RK4T

 

You pause at that. So Karkat is open for the courting, then. Not that this courting is happening anywhere outside your head currently. It’s just that you’re sick of hearing his voice in your head on a constant loop, and by sick you probably mean lovesick.

 

TG: okay thats cool  
TG: is it anyone i know  
GC: YOU KNOW 3V3RYON3  
TG: everyone knows me theres a difference  
TG: but good im glad youre happy im not gonna press you for details  
TG: get some rest dude  
TG: also i just wanted to say

gallowsCallibrator ceased pestering turntechGodhead at 20:11:45.

gallowsCallibrator is offline.

 

Huh.

 

The break up is probably what this distance is about. You can’t really blame her, and she’s being more mature about it than literally everyone you know is about their break ups. She may still love you - in fact, you don't doubt she does, and you love her, you always will - but the fact is that she's going out of her way to stay away from you at school. This isn't something that you need her to admit, and it's unfair of you to try and get her to. Things will go back to normal eventually.

 

Unless you fuck things up entirely by trying to romance Karkat. It isn't lost on you how weird this is, that she's part of the reason he has ever been in your sights. Still, this wouldn't be the first time your mass of friends exchanged partners. She and Vriska had a "secret" thing in middle school when you and her were on a break, after which Vriska had a "secreter" thing with Meenah, and Terezi and Meenah have made out several times since that, and Meenah's dating Vriska's cousin now, and Aranea and Porrim, and Porrim and Meenah. Somehow Tavros is involved in there somewhere, and Gamzee with him. So yeah, maybe this isn't that weird.

 

Before the party goes down, you tell John what your sort of plan is. You don’t think that getting Karkat alone and telling him -  _actually_ telling him - that his show has already impacted your life, even though it's only been a few days since you really  _heard him,_ will even work because he probably won’t show up. He has every right to not. Still, you tell another soul about your feelings, because maybe putting them out there will cause the universe to do something in favor about them. John calls you around eight thirty.

 

“Strider's BDSM Boutique. All our other operators are tied up right now, but you can leave a message for _me,_ bad boy.”

 

_"Ugh, you are the worst. I'll be right back, I need to bleach my ears."_

 

“Medically unsound, young whippersnapper. Are you picking up disposable champagne glasses or what?”

 

_"Yeah, yeah, I'm on my way. Who's all gonna be there tonight?"  
_

 

"Not many. Meenah and extended junior-senior company obviously. Guest list is fifty or sixty as of now. And. I invited Karkat."

 

 _"Ha! Still going for that eighty bucks that you are_ definitely _not going to take from my wallet, huh?"_

 

"You can keep your pocket change even if I do it. I'm not in this for gold. I'm in this for heart."

 

_"Woowww. No offense, but that was really gay."_

 

"You're gay."

 

_"You wish."_

 

That is...something you're not gonna brood over, that response. It goes deep, or at least starts, and reminds you of things you don't want to think about.

 

"Fuck off and bring me my cups, serf."

 

_"Okay! See you soon! This is gonna be a lot of fun."_

 

You spend the party mostly running around refilling bottles and food, giving the robots a break because you don't want some drunk dumbass to push one into the pool. Every now and then you do a wild dive into the water, socialize a little, drink a little wine, post some exclusives for the Snap, but really you're just happy to have people at the house. You're a natural born proprietor tonight. Aranea once called you Jay Gatsby with the way you throw your parties, and you think she meant it underhanded, but you took it as a compliment. Except the part where he dies when his mistress's jilted ex husband shoots him in the chest, fuck that part.

 

When you see that Karkat's shown up - alone - you have a minor panic attack and try to play it cool. He came, which means he came to see you. Probably. You're upstairs on the second floor's kitchen observing through the windows as he gets himself acquainted, watching as Meenah, Aranea and Porrim wave him into the jacuzzi. You're really glad he and Meenah get along, that's a good sign. She can also probably help him with his removed, resentful relationship with his older brother. You don't know too much about it, because Kankri and you are really only friends by proxy, but you know that you're only just getting to know him now because Kankri has worked to do a number on his image and reputation around school. You also want Karkat to enjoy himself tonight, without his brother around, to not feel like he should  _just_ be here to see you. Even though you're kind of dying to get close.

 

Then, just after midnight - you've herded everyone into the parlor in the east wing, and you and John are checking the pool for stragglers - you see him sitting alone in your jacuzzi, through the sliding glass door you stand behind. He has his eyes closed, his head tipped back, his curly hair slick, and his shoulders glistening and golden. Your heart is in your throat, and if you could just get over yourself and be vulnerable, let him see  _you,_ this could be your actual chance. He's still here, and you're much more sober than last night - almost entirely by this point, actually - clear head and clear heart enough to get through to him.

 

John is about to open the door when you stop him, hand on his arm.

 

“Hey," you say, gesturing to the aim of your affections. "Think I might have my chance, so. Goin’ outside to lock it down.”

 

John hums. “I bet you twenty more big ones he’s gonna scream when you try to kiss him.”

 

“He might. Whatever. Just cover for me, okay? _If_ he likes me back, he’s so worried about people’s gossip that I don’t want anyone drunkenly stumblin’ out there and killin’ the vibe.”

 

John clasps a hand on your shoulder, dramatic. “I got you, bro.”

 

Karkat doesn't scream when you try to kiss him. Not quite. It helps that your conversation before is about his show, and yours, and celebrity in general. It helps that you took down your post about him, that you show him a piece of how deeply insecure you can be about yourself too, that the frustration you felt around him last night has almost entirely melted, that he's looking at you like he's _hungry_ and straight up staring at your lips and oh fuck, you are so fucked, you're kissing him deep and he _wants it_ and he feels better than you could've imagined.

 

Then he starts pulling on your hair, and that's it.

 

You pick him up wrapped around your waist and carry him all the way up the outdoor stairs to your bedroom's balcony. Glad you've been doing some crossfit in your room every now and then, because you manage to hold him with mostly your core while reaching one arm to twist open the door. It helps that his thighs squeeze your hips so tight they're probably going to bruise.

 

You lay him across your duvet, slowly peel his wet shorts, and find yourself stuck, on account of you just want to _stare_. That would suffice.

 

Karkat becomes unnerved by your staring. "What are you doing?"

 

"I'm...admiring you."

 

Karkat rolls his eyes. "Since when have you ever admired me."

 

"You don't believe me about this, do you?"

 

"Believe what, exactly?"

 

"Guess I'll just have to convince you then."

 

"You're doing a whole lot of fucking talking for someone trying so hard to convince."

 

You laugh, nervous as all fuck, but eager to please. "So where would you like my mouth then?" You exalt his stomach with kisses. "Here good?"

 

"...Yeah."

 

You descend down one of his hips, sucking kisses along his inner thigh.

 

"I swear to god, Strider, if this is a joke..."

 

You snap back up to look him in the eye. Caress his face in your hand.

 

"It's not a joke. I'm dead fucking serious, you are so beautiful."

 

He pulls you down by the back of the neck with both hands, to kiss him again.

 

"Beautiful," he repeats in a whisper.

 

"Yeah, beautiful."

 

You are suddenly being flipped over onto your back, rough and aggressive, and he sits on you, pinning both of your hands above your head.

 

"You're still going to have to work hard to prove it to me."

 

Oh, you love this. More where this comes from immediately.

 

"More than willing, babe. Work me."

 

After the first round, he is curled in your arms and catching his breath. You kiss his back and shoulder, everywhere you can reach.

 

"Mm," Karkat sighs. "Stop that. You're gonna make me wanna go again."

 

You are smiling so hard. "I am so not opposed to that, not even a little."

 

He waves his hand at you noncommittally. "Later. When I come fucking crashing back down to Earth and it doesn't feel like - like a dream."

 

You kiss the back of his neck, practically melting. "Want a little tour of the house?"

 

The entertainment room is where you end up on your tour of the house's third floor. Karkat watches as you set up the dab rig, wearing his swim shorts and one of your t-shirts (he was extraordinarily picky about which one he'd wear, finally settling on a white one with a scratched record). You, meanwhile, stay naked, because it's your house and you can.

 

Even though you're currently operating a literal blow torch to heat up the nail of the pipe, Karkat's eyes are everywhere but your hands or face, and you think it's funny. You totally don't mind being objectified in this case.

 

You spread a swipe of wax over the glowing metal, careful not to portion it too heavy. "You ever hit it like this before?"

 

He thinks you mean something else for a minute, and his eyes wander down your torso, and then he looks minorly horrified at himself. He snaps his attention up to the nail.

 

"No."

 

"It's gonna be a lot stronger than what you're used to, but it lasts longer too. Here you go, come get it while it's hot."

 

He takes his huge hit, like a champ you might add, exhales, and sits back into the couch, watching you take yours. You lean down and blow half of your smoke into a kiss with him, reveling in his little hum.

 

You sit down next to him.

 

"How do you feel?"

 

He laughs, gorgeous and totally relaxed.

 

"Everything."

 

You both laugh, because you're high and everything's funny.

 

"Dude the first time I took a full dab I straight up laid down on the floor of Dirk's room curled in ball for three hours, I couldn't even drag myself from place to place like a slug, Jake had to feed me pizza by standing over me and lowering it into me like a crane - "

 

"Dave."

 

He trails his fingers up your arm, smiling like he has a secret.

 

"Stop talking and just kiss me."

 

Finally, he's completely tired you out by four in the morning. When you wake up around eight, you find yourself alone on the couch. That was to be expected, you guess, when the high of the moment wore off for him. Still, the place where he was laying in front of you is still warm, like he was just there. It re-dawns on you as well that Dirk and Jake left yesterday morning, that officially, you're alone for the semester. This makes you feel like you should re-up on a dab, so you do. Just as you finish taking it, Karkat walks back into the room.

 

The sunlight's addition to the room makes his brown skin look absolutely luminous.

 

You ask him not to leave, and he doesn't, for the next five hours.

 

Your conversation airs out a good amount of what needs to be said - you apologize for what you did to he and Terezi last year, and he repeats his doubts about your genuine interest in him - and you admit, when he correctly guesses, that you and John had a bet, which he is rightly pissed off about. You tell him you never needed the bet, that you're in this because of him - in your way. You tell him the easy listening version of the Strider-English origin story, because you're too high to get into the pain of it. You fuck twice, long and eager and deep. He has a mini gay crisis in between. You've had plenty of those, you practically have 'em everyday, and you try to reassure him. But he's not sure about his own.

 

You leave things on a bittersweet note.

 

 

 “I think God, in creating man, overestimated his ability.”

 

 

After Karkat leaves, you start to feel weird. It's not just what he said about acting like your night and morning together never happened, though that might be part of it.  _"Th_ _is was just a high-induced hormonal teenage shitfuck of an entanglement that we never, and I mean literally, never ever have to tell another breathing human about. When I leave here you will go back to ignoring me and being your usual tool self, do you hear me?"_ It's something else. Like you're forgetting about something about today. September 4th. What's September 4th?

 

Ah. It's the anniversary of the day you found out.

 

Bro comes home suddenly, on top of it being that day, too. You hear the security system beep when he comes through the front doors. He walks into the kitchen as you're pushing a spoon through soggy cereal. He has to have seen the broken glass window in the foyer, but he doesn't seem pressed. Never does.

 

"Hey," you say to him.

 

"Hey."

 

"I thought you were in Ibiza."

 

"I was. Yesterday. Just in LA for two nights. Nipsey Hussle's place tonight, meeting tomorrow. Back to Ibiza after that."

 

Vague as ever.

 

"Cool."

 

He peruses the refrigerator's interactive screen, looking through the contents. Opens it, sticks a wrapped string cheese in his mouth, and starts moving towards the stairs.

 

"You're gonna get that fucking window fixed, right?"

 

God, he's such a douchebag.

 

"Yep."

 

"I'll send you however much it is. Just let me know."

 

"Okay."

 

The cereal goes unfinished. You stare at the withering corn flakes like their matter contains a message, until you hear the doors beep again on his way out. He was only here for twenty minutes. He's gone.

 

You stand up, knock the ceramic bowl and milk onto the floor.

 

You sigh. That didn't make you feel any better, of course.

 

"That was stupid."

 

You're about to start picking up one of the three shards the bowl broke into when one of the robots rolls into the kitchen, probably having heard the crash.

 

It comes over to investigate. Looks down at the mess, processes, and then turns to look at you.

 

"Don't worry, Master Strider," it says, cheerful as an artificial voice can sound. "I'll get that for you."

 

"Thanks."

 

You watch as it takes the broken bowl to the trash compactor and unlatches the dishwasher for the spoon, whistling that little song from Snow White as it works. Hearing that of all things makes you want to cry. You shove that feeling back down where it came from, jesus fuck. You pack bond with these precious cyborgs because you have to.

 

When you messaged Karkat yesterday morning about Jade, you told him that you "lost somebody not that long ago." That might've been overselling it, and you were high when you said it, but still, every year for years now, on or around the day, the memory of it comes back to you in some way. This person, or more of this idea, that you lost was your birth mother. You never met her, still feel so little connection to her that it might as well be nothing, and didn't even know she existed until you were in eighth grade. But you found out about her after snooping through some of Bro’s stuff in the house.

 

This is what you refer to as the last time you cried, four years ago. You were home alone, as Dirk was dropping Jake off at guitar lessons, and you were feeling especially bratty that Bro had just been gone for a couple weeks or whatever. He was in town right now, had just stepped out to go the store, but you wanted him to catch you doing nosy shit, just to make him pay attention to you or something. His room was never off limits, since he usually wasn't around to check if you went in, and it wasn't like you hadn't raided his giant closet for clothes or old swords or embarrassing Polaroids of him since you moved to the mansion. He never noticed or commented that things looked out of place whenever you did. It was that that day, damn you, you felt like going  _deep_ into the closet. Uncovering boxes shut with tape that it looked like he hadn't opened in years. Skeletons.

 

There was such an old shoe box that he'd ripped the tape on recently, sitting on the middle shelf wedged between some of his shoes. There were handwritten letters resting over the lid and what appeared to be more handwritten letters inside of it. The first letter, dated back in 1995, let you know that this woman, the author, had a passionate and graphic one night stand with Bro Strider after one of his gigs. The second one let you - and Bro at the time - know that she dropped " _Dirk_ " off on the porch in 1996, basically newborn, and said, _"Sorry, I can't take care of him. You try."_ The third was her reminiscing on the time she came back two years later to check on Bro, at another one of his gigs, during which you were apparently conceived. The fourth informs Bro that she also left  _"Dave"_ on the porch in 1999, and that she was  _"still"_ struggling with drugs. _"Opiates, cocaine, THC, rinse with Jack. You know how it is."_ You couldn’t believe this fucking story, you really couldn't, but the letters told it. Either Bro was schizophrenic and writing a shitty porny romance to himself in a female's blue handwriting, or this strange but eloquent woman with an addiction to porch steps was schizophrenic and thought she was your mother. Or she was your mother.

 

Bro told the story to you just as well. You carried the box of letters - there was still one more you hadn't read, but you couldn't read anymore until he answered your questions - and sat in the middle of the foyer waiting for him to find you with it. He walked in, shades donned, with his arms full of groceries, and looked at you on the floor, and said nothing at first.

 

When you asked if this person was your mother, he said yes. When you asked whatever happened to her, he told you that he found out she died just that year.

 

“Three days ago, in fact. She wrote me one last letter, on her fuckin’ deathbed, which is why I had 'em out. All about nostalgia, me and her, just like the first four. Meanwhile I’m the one who’s singlehandedly carried our spawn from cradle to health. Notice how, in all those letters, there’s no return address? She always knew how to reach me, even here, but getting in touch with her? Sis lived in the goddamn void. So, frankly, I won’t miss her. Sure it’s sad, but people die young all the time.”

 

You'd started tearing up as soon as he said yes, hoping your shades covered it enough.

 

“Were you ever gonna tell us?”

 

Bro hesitated, regarding you. "You're not crying, are you?"

 

You couldn't answer that.

 

“She wasn’t your mom. She was...shit, an egg donor at this point, that’s what we’ll call her. She dropped in on me a grand total of thrice. Two of those times were to leave you both swaddled in blankets at my door three years apart like my life is a fucking Hollywood movie or some shit. And yeah, I know, fool me once, shame on her, fool me twice, shame on me for our chemistry being that fuckin’ bananas that I managed to get her knocked up _again._ But she could’ve stuck around. I didn’t have shit back then either. I lived in the fucking projects and all I had going for me was this body. But even when I became somebody, that wasn’t enough for her to seek me out. To seek _you_ out. Your face is plastered all over the Internet for god’s sake. I meet big-ups all over the country and it’s often enough they have kids that’ve read one of your comics, or know one of your songs, or have one of your toasted memes printed on a t-shirt. Dirk is making a name for himself in research labs across the country, kid’s a goddamn techno-prodigy who’s been on the BBC. She didn’t want anything to do with us, and you should take that personally. So, I’m sorry, kid, but you can’t cry over someone you never knew. All you’re crying about is the loss of an idea, that maybe you would’ve turned out better had your infant self known the warm embrace of a woman and sucked on her tits. Breastmilk ain’t all it’s cracked up to be, Dave. Neither are moms.”

 

He walked past you - over you, really - stocked the fridge, and walked out of his house. He was gone for another week.

 

Dirk got home from dropping Jake off and found you at the kitchen table, shades off, the box of letters open in front of you.

 

He could see that you'd been crying. "What happened."

 

You nudged a chair out for him with your foot. "Just read this shit, bro."

 

Dirk sat next to you and took off his glasses to read the first four letters. When he was done, he leaned forward onto his elbows and pinched the bridge of his nose.

 

"You're fucking kidding me, right. This is her. This is where the jokes that we weren't born of a human woman or that he found us in a radioactive lab but we somehow look just like him come from. Jesus."

 

"Gets worse," you told him. "She just died."

 

He sighed. "When?"

 

"Three days ago."

 

He laughed, which was a better reaction than you had. You guessed.

 

"I never looked into it," he said, "got a DNA test or anything like that, because part of me never wanted to know that it would be. So, well. Typical."

 

You raised your eyebrows as high as they could go. "You think getting dropped off on the porch by same lady twice is fucking typical?"

 

"Isn't it, though? For us, I mean. I mean that is some really hood shit there. She was obviously articulate, probably had a good head on her at one point before the heroin, and cared I guess enough to leave us with the guy who knocked her up in the back of a club twice instead of at some fire station, but got caught up in some fucking hood shit. Same as he did, until he deus ex machina'd himself out of the cycle of poverty in a tear-jerking Hollywood narrative the world just loves to hear. She was a regular Beaumont drug addict, where we come from. Deadbeat mom. He could've just said that. When we were little."

 

When he put it that way, you guessed you felt a little less depressed. Only a little, though. You'd wondered, and tried to make yourself not wonder. Now you knew you could never meet her, so there was that.

 

"She named us," you pointed out.

 

"Yeah. And Bro just kept the names, like sure, I guess this is my life now. Okay."

 

Dirk took a deep breath, and looked over at you. You held his eye contact, his strange orange in your strange red. He was strong. How was he so strong?

 

"Since it's all out in the air," Dirk said. "You wanna know about her?"

 

Dirk pulled his laptop to the kitchen table, and spent the next three hours researching her name. Dirk was able to hack into paid genealogy sites, which sped up the process significantly, as well as archaic archived phone and records books that gave him a list of several addresses where she drifted to and fro. Medical records, even. All of this made her become a real person, with a history and physical location that was always just sitting there. It made you even more angry with Bro than you thought you knew what to do with. He was a hacker. He was the one who taught Dirk how to do all of this. Dirk was doing it in seconds.

 

"He just," you said, "tried to make it sound like there was no way he could've found her. That he _tried._ Specifically, and I quote, that she lived in the void."

 

Dirk shrugged. “He lied. He’s a liar.”

 

You left him to his research for a while into it, feeling like you needed to calm down a little. When you came back, Dirk asked if you were ready to know any more. You said yes, because knowledge felt like revenge. He showed you that he found a website she posted on the wayback machine. She was an author from 2005 to 2006, writing fantasy romance stories. Her biography on the sideline detailed her history with addiction, which she said inspired her work. Given that her stint as an author was so brief, Dirk theorized, she went back to the hard stuff and couldn't write anymore. He said her trail of addresses got less and less consistent and trackable after this point. She had a string of arrests for petty theft and minor possession crimes in Beaumont from 2007 to 2012, as well as several unsuccessful stints in rehab. From 2012 to your current year, she went dark.

 

"Got in touch with her mother," Dirk said then, sitting back, arms crossed behind his head. "Technically, our grandmother. Good old Chumbook. She says we can come to the funeral service if we want. It's in Pine Forest, Texas," he added exaggerated twang, "morning after next."

 

You had a grandmother. It didn't feel like it, at least not yet. Bro had never let you know a thing about his blood relatives. If he had them, even knew where they were. You were starting to think he actually did know.

 

"Do you want to?" you asked Dirk.

 

"Not sure. Kinda wanna do it just to spite Bro, though."

 

"Same."

 

"Rack up his credit card with last minute airfare and taxis and make him wonder what the fuck we're diggin' into his past for?"

 

You nodded. "Sounds like a plan."

 

 

 

"The real tragedies of life occur in such an inartistic manner that they hurt us by their absurd lack of meaning."

 

 

 

It wasn't, though, much of a plan.  It was a funeral.

 

You flew to Texas on a red eye. Skipped school. The service was at seven in the morning. You basically got off the plane and took an Uber X to the graveyard. Bro's treat.

 

The service was in front of her undecorated plot, and it was raining. You hated that it was raining, like the weather was trying to be dark and symbolic on purpose. You hadn't slept or ate anything, jet lagged from the time jump ahead, and you and Dirk stood under an umbrella dressed in matching itchy black. The other viewers consisted of your grandmother - who was eighty, and looked nothing like you and Dirk, and was crying so violently that it made you uncomfortable - a guy who your mom had apparently been in rehab with a couple of times, and the clergyman who was reading the most generic fucking reading you'd ever heard.

 

The whole time, with a twitch in your eye, you stared at the picture of her in the dull frame and very much not at the closed casket. Trying to make yourself cry, or understand her, or miss her or something. Mostly, you felt irritable, starving, damp, and a whole lot of nothing.

 

After she was lowered, you stood underneath a tree getting dripped on by raindrops as Dirk stood with the umbrella and spoke to your grandmother. You could only somewhat make out what they were saying - she wanted you two to stay in town, get a hotel or stay with her, meet the other members of her family in Pine Forest who weren't anywhere near this funeral - and Dirk was politely declining.

 

Dirk came back to you, wearing his shades like a guard, and you stood next to each other, staring at each other's shoes in the dirt.

 

"This is weird, right?" you said. "Like you wanna leave and forget we ever did this fucking horseshit too?"

 

"Yeah. Yeah. Let's just go."

 

 

 

turntechGodhead [TG] started pestering mercurialEmpress [ME] at 14:11:44

TG: meenah  
ME: sup  
TG: i need you to take the rest of the coke  
ME: aight. how much $$$  
TG: just take it  
ME: k  
ME: im omw

 

 


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This part coincides with Chapters 6 and 7. How excited are we that DaveKat is officially canon? :)

 

 

“The very essence of romance is uncertainty.”

 

    
Three weeks later, it occurs to you that the person Terezi is "seeing" could be John. They have been spending more time together, and John is talking about her more. One day you move to sit with them at lunch, at the end of the long table full of your friends, and they stop talking when you get close. You stand before them as holograms of neon color swirl in the rims of your Spectacles.

 

“Wow, what’s so secret over here?”

 

Terezi doesn’t say anything, and John: “Nothing! We were just discussing how  _cool_ it is that you wear glasses you can't even see out of.”

 

“Ha ha, very funny.”

 

But then you catch them look at each other, and John doesn’t move over to let you sit.

 

“Well fuck you guys then,” you say nonchalant, “I’m gonna go sit with my real friends, Vriska and Meenah.”

 

“Vriska hates you,” Terezi points out.

 

“What? Me and Vriska are tight, we practically share panties.”

 

“Ew,” John supplies.

 

“Pretty soon she’s gonna replace you, Egbert.”

 

“Uh huh!”

 

They resume their conversation the moment you slide between Meenah and Vriska, for which Meenah is excited and Vriska is pissed, same old same old. But you watch as Terezi leans into his shoulder every time he talks, the way their thighs touch under the table. Blue and teal from your Spectacles' VR twirl around her waist, then his, then billow into red clouds. You can’t ask directly if they're a thing because you don’t want to think about it. Granted Terezi would be well within her rights to do something like date your best friend, because you’ve been head over heels pursuing her ex. But does it have to be  _John?_ Though it’s not like she knows how you've always felt about him.

 

Used to feel about him.

  

Karkat hasn't acknowledged you any more than usual, which you were completely expecting. He  _was_ affected by you, you know, because sometimes you catch him staring at you. Just making eye contact with him sends you right back to your night, and you figure he's got a similar affliction. How could he not? Hands down that was the best sex you've ever had, and you've had a lot of sex and he was a  _virgin,_ or at least, a dude virgin. It surprised you both. You knew there was something there, but for it to be  _that?_ It was like you'd always known him, like the two of you were reuniting lovers after a dry spell, like your bodies just knew what the other needed and craved based on years of muscle memory. It freaked him out, and you don't blame him. It'd freak you out more, if you didn't understand why you feel the way you do.

 

It does hurt that he doesn’t want a single soul knowing you know each other. Are you really that uncool that he’s ashamed to be seen with you? Scratch that, you’re pretty fucking cool objectively. But you also understand what he means: it’s no secret that almost everyone at school at least casually follows your online fame, that most of Valley View is watching or just straight up intruding on your business. You feel for Karkat’s fear of people all up in his business. You aren’t really in a place anymore where you can take the spotlight off yourself, but sometimes you wonder what it’d be like. Sometimes you too just wanna be invisible.

 

Impossible now that you’re you. Still, that’s why you leave him alone.

 

He does make you feel invisible, and it's sort of a humbling thrill. Just before seventh period, he's nearby in the hallway with Rose and Kanaya where you're waiting for the doors of dummy Algebra to open. He doesn't notice you. He's laughing at whatever Rose is saying to him so hard that he's collapsed on Kanaya's shoulder, brown skin burning rose and tears spilling. You're struck absolutely fucking stupid because Karkat never displays that much emotion. He usually looks like there's a thunderstorm following him, tired and solemn, even when he smiles. The solemn is a dark sort of beautiful in its own right, because you know he has a deep understanding of the futility of the world - just listen to ten episodes of Quadrant in a row - it would be hard to be in his head. But this is like staring into bright sunlight after years of heavy cloud cover. 

 

You've still been listening to the Quadrant every night. The show's spike in listenership has earned them an earlier timeslot on WBFN, more calls, and Karkat's been at the top of his game with the topics. Tonight, he does less shit talking and slows things down. Depression is the theme, particularly what happens to your love life and self esteem in its fits, and you're on the edge of your seat with every word. 

 

 _"The worst thing about it,"_ KK is saying as he finishes a call with a regular,  _"is that you'd expect that depression means you're going to be crying all the time and feeling excessively sad and lonely, when sometimes, it can actually feel like a whole lot of fucking nothing. The most frustrating part isn't that you're alone, but that you're too numb to even_ care  _that you're alone. That's when - well, that's when people start to assume you're faking it, honestly. Because you just look lazy, or bored, and it's like - no, Mom, I'm not not picking up the piles of clothes that are completely concealing every inch of my floor because I'm lazy, I'm not doing it because it's not going to make me feel any better even if I do. All it's going to do is remind me that the clothes are a metaphor for how much shit is piling upon me, and the unfeeling floor is a metaphor for my brain."_

 

A younger girl calls in not long after that, and you're pretty sure everyone tuned in is emotional after this one.

 

_"Um, hi, KK. I'm a freshman at your school - don't worry, I won't say what school - but my friends are listening to your show all the time, so tonight I decided to try it out and - I'm sorry."_

 

She chokes up, obviously struggling. Karkat is only quiet for a moment.

 

_"It's okay. Are you still there?"_

 

_"Yes. I was just, um - I wasn't going to tell anyone this, but tonight I was planning on killing myself. I'm sorry, I know this isn't a suicide hotline."_

 

_"No, no. Fuck, no, don't apologize, I - are you okay? Are you in a safe place right now?"_

 

_"I'm in my room. I don't know, something told me to try and act like the rest of the night was going to be normal, to make sure my parents or friends didn't think anything, so I thought, well, let me listen to the radio one last time, that seems like a normal thing to do. And for you to be talking about this, tonight of all nights...and everyone calling saying they feel the same way...it feels like a sign. Like I'm not the only one who feels like this anymore."_

 

You aren't crying, but you sure are pretty close. What freshman girl is that? How many freshman girls at Valley View could it be, really? A bunch of them have a KK fan club, you saw them curled up in the grass outside the quad at lunch a week ago, listening to one of his archived recordings. You try hard to remember their faces. You can't.

 

 _"Well if this is what's going to be your sign, I'll take it,"_ Karkat says.  _"I know it doesn't seem worth it, I know sometimes it feels like it's never gonna end. But it does. Fuck me for going 'it gets better' on your ass when I'm hardly at the better of it myself, but sometimes there is something, you know? Even if it's not the glamorous steady upward trajectory of recovery that the movies and society predicts we_ should  _follow when it comes to mental illness. Some days, there will just be that one thing. Even if tomorrow you feel back at square zero again, just remember that someone out there somewhere is doing a show like this - not literally, but - you're not alone, is what I'm saying."_

 

_"Yes, I get what you're saying. Thank you."_

 

_"And if you need anything - seriously, if you ever need to talk to someone about this, you can walk up to me at school and just start talking. Any time, okay?"_

 

_"Okay. Thanks, KK."_

 

_"You're gonna be alright tonight? We're both gonna trek through the melodramatic nightmare of a throng of hormonal bodies that disguises itself as a functioning high school tomorrow morning?"_

 

She laughs, and you breathe a sigh of relief.  _"Yes. Fuck our school sometimes, right?"_

 

_"Fuck our school times two, times a thousand, et cetera."_

 

She hangs up, after ensuring him one last time that she's okay, and just like he always does, KK continues on. He fields more calls for the next twenty minutes, many offering words of advice to the freshman girl, others lamenting similar struggles. You don't know how this kid isn't more famous than you. Seriously? Your online persona is basically an extended joke - you can't remember the last time you distributed a meaningful word, drawing or song to the thousands of people following you. Not that everything has to be meaningful all the time, and the instrumental music you've been making lately is coming from a place of meaning, even if it's not obvious. But Karkat doesn't even  _know._ His project isn't just him blathering into abyss like he constantly claims. It alters people, forces them to come to terms with their hearts. It alters you every time. This is why you feel the way you do.

 

You get all of two hours of sleep that night, [constructing rhythms and drops](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c2jDUpPoKBQ) that you visualize him throughout. In between the song, you mess around on the Quadrant app his friends and him built using the stylus on your phone. Right now you're going by a different username than your usual @davestrider, mostly because you aren't sure you want him to know how obsessively devoted a fan you are, but also because it allows you to interact with listeners from a neutral place. Tonight you (@thegroundislava) and some guy going by @kikkitbarrakk "swipe right" on each other because you're both fans of an obscure black and white comic that you were in love with as a kid. It's part of the reason you got into drawing in the first place, and he's pretty much got the original artist's style down to a T. You and him start up a corner of the shipping wall depicting the characters going on a journey through outer space to meet the former President. His Obama characterization is spot on.

 

The next day at school, it's a combination of what he said in the episode and the way that he looks - is he wearing different jeans? Have his thighs always looked so gloriously thick? You saw him naked but he looks better in dark denim than you can even deal, and  _his hair_ _-_ that has you itching to pester him about something, anything. Maybe he won't object so hard to you casually catching up with him. Maybe you're surprised that his tired and overcast look is still on his face as ever. He may have saved someone's life last night, does he know? Of course he does. It's stupid of you to think that he'd be walking around like a hero because of it. Depression is a long term game.

 

He doesn't object to your messages as hard as you thought. He replies immediately, and every line of gray all-caps snark has you near literally fanning yourself. The only significant pause from him comes after you offer him a ride home, and  _shit,_ you think,  _I look thirsty as hell._ You aren't trying to get his pants off with this, even though when most high school guys ask someone they're attracted to to hang out in their car, the implications are stated. 

 

CG: OKAY.

CG: YOU MAY PICK ME UP FROM EXACTLY WHERE I'M CURRENTLY STANDING AND PLACE ME DIRECTLY IN FRONT OF MY RESIDENCE.

CG: NO WHERE ELSE, DO YOU HEAR ME? NO STOPS. NO INTERMISSIONS. NO DRAGGING ME TO MCDONALDS FOR A MCFLURRY.

TG: shit i could really go for a mcflurry right now

CG: DO YOU ACTUALLY EAT AT MCDONALDS? I'D ASSUME SOMEONE WITH ASSLOADS OF MONEY FALLING OUT OF THEIR POCKETS WOULDN'T GRACE SUCH MORTAL ESTABLISHMENTS. DON'T YOU PEOPLE ONLY EAT CAVIAR AND GOLD LEAF?

TG: karkat you wound me

TG: mcdonalds is good no matter how rich you are

TG: and caviar tastes like sperm

CG: I DON'T WANT TO KNOW WHY YOU KNOW WHAT SPERM TASTES LIKE.

TG: you should know

TG: i tasted yours

 

 _Dave what the_ _fuck. Thirsty as hell._ You're practically Satan in the depths, deprived of hydration for eternity. Why did you say that, why did you -

 

When you pull up to the curb where Karkat stands, you swear to yourself. Hands off. He needs to come to you if this is ever going to happen. It may never happen. This is just a ride to his house. He may be Godly, but he doesn't want you the way you want him.

 

He slides into your passenger seat, throwing his backpack carelessly to the floor beneath his legs. Blush is spreading his cheekbones. Like you're any less hot.

 

"Sorry I said that," you say.

 

Karkat eyes you cautiously, but there's a twitch at the corner of his mouth. Is that - was he going to smile? "Whatever. Not like it's not true." 

 

You're sweating. You look back to the Ferrari emblem in your steering wheel, tapping your fingers.

 

"Where are we going?" you ask him.

 

"Oh. Right. Bridgewood, off Willow. You know where that is?"

 

"Yeah."

 

He changes your music as soon as you pull off, no hesitation with fiddling with the next button through your playlist. His confidence in doing this like you have no objections is funny. He could pull the whole stereo out and push it through the glass of his window for all you care. 

 

He settles on [a song](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=18-WqTqiCW8) he doesn't realize has one of your popular beats sampled in it, since you figure he's never heard your music. Whether it's that he just got bored of scrolling or it's because he actually likes it, you can't tell. When you're finally clear of the main intersection across school, you shift gears and rev to the normal sixty you take it on the side streets; they're clear enough in the afternoons. Karkat reacts, shifts in his seat, staring at you with raised brows. You know not even he is immune to the Ferrari's sexy. 

 

"You drive like an insane person," he says.

 

Or maybe he is. "Thanks." 

 

"How many speeding tickets do you have?"

 

"Too many."

 

His stomach growls, deep and extended. If you can hear it over the music, he must be famished.

 

"Okay, maybe I could use a McFlurry."

 

It's mostly his idea to come over for an hour or two; you threw it out there once you'd acquired your ice cream, and he accepted on the condition he invented right then that you smoked him out in gratitude. You could agree to that. It may have helped too that you showed him what you drew on his app last night with @kikkitbarrakk in the drive-thru. He started talking about the hiccups his friends go through on the upkeep, so you demonstrated that it was working more than fine on the user end. That earned you a genuine smile. You may have reveled in it.

 

You don't get high enough that you can't level with him; you've been trying not to smoke so heavily, the low you reached when Bro came home a harrowing reminder of how dangerous it is to drug yourself through your life. Karkat doesn't have too much either, but he gets high enough to open up to you. It occurs to you that you really could just be friends with him, all things considered. Sure he's like the hottest person you've ever laid on eyes on at this stage, and you'd be lying if you said that when he walked before you up the stairs to your bedroom, you weren't dying a little bit at the view. But you're used to having to curb the part of you that's weak for beautiful boys.

 

You take him home at exactly the time he requested, wishing it could be longer, but again, you're used to the curb. Though you wonder if you shouldn't casually let him know that you'd be willing to do this again. Talk like friends. Whenever he wanted.

 

"Not to be presumptuous," you say, as you idle in front of his house, "but we should do this again sometime."

 

Karkat hesitates, and then sighs. "I just don't think - I'm still uncomfortable with the Terezi of our situation."

 

You pause. He wouldn't be uncomfortable with that unless... "You think she wouldn't want us to be friends?"

 

"I mean, it's just that she knows how much I hate you, and yes, I still mean currently hate, so she's no doubt going to question why we started hanging out in the first place. And do you think I want to tell her, when she's already upset with me, that I made out with her ex? Kind of just to spite her?"

 

Ouch. You should've figured that was part of his motivation. Revenge.

 

Still, you take it in stride.

 

"That's fair. Well, while it lasted. Thank you, Karkat."

 

He looks at you like he doesn't know why you're thanking him. To be fair, you still haven't told him.

 

"Uh. You're welcome?"

 

He doesn't get out of the car right away. There's that moment. His eyes pass over your lips, the energy between you heating up. Your stomach flips. 

 

"Okay," he says, frowning slightly. "...Bye."

 

He gets out, walking quickly to his porch step. You wait until he's completely inside to drive home.

 

If it feels a little bit like punishment to still listen to the Quadrant that night, you shove that feeling back down where it came from. His show is more than you trying to beef up your knowledge on him for playing points. It's that you can't not listen to him now. What more can he say to blow and stimulate your mind? You can support him from afar, if that's what he wants. 

 

_"Good fucking night and welcome back, one and all, to the one oasis of arguable sanity keeping me and my friends from raging against the planet. Tonight, we're talking homophobia. Yeah, you heard that right. We've been skirting around the discussion, given that modern love these days is blended and the boundaries of gendered confines are rapidly decreasing. Not that everyone is so willing to admit it, even in this our year of 2017! It came to my attention today that someone in my family would be repulsed if I or my sibling were to hypothetically fall in love with a man. There a number of crossing factors there I'd imagine - religion, his old school machismo concepts of masculinity, the fact that in the 80s, it literally was dangerous to be a homosexual because Reagan was basically letting the same sex inclined be wiped out by AIDS willy fucking nilly. But those are just my hypotheses, what do I know? I'm sure the people currently drawing a lesbian catgirl epic spanning forty days worth of digital ink on our shipping wall right now have much better theories than I do. Lay it on me, you fucking furries. Loving the epic, by the way, don't tell AC I said that."_

 

_"I'm sitting right next to you, dummy!"_

 

_"KK thtop acting like you're not a fucking furry."_

 

_"Was that slander I just heard? Or was it the excessive saliva from your lisp getting caught in the mic?"_

 

_"Like you don't thlobber all over that thing with your tongue every time you open your trap."_

 

_"Of course you're watching my tongue from way over there. Just come out to me already Armageddons, you've been in love with me since we met."_

 

_"I'm in love with you like I'm in love with the fact that you jutht contracted yourthelf and the topic by implying that IF I wath harboring thome thecret love for you, it'd be a fucking problem."_

 

_"Fuck you, touché."_

 

You're trying really hard to imagine that tonight's topic has nothing to do with the way he was looking at you. The instinct he had to almost kiss you, like it felt natural, but the hesitation that moved him along. Is it his dad? It must be his dad. He was just talking about how jaded he's become with Catholicism, how his dad keeps holding onto it even though it's doing nothing for them anymore. Maybe that's what he meant by the Terezi of your situation. He  _could_ still be with her, should be if his family's beliefs have something to do with it. 

 

 _"I think you guys all know I'm a lesbian,"_  long time listener britneyspearscansuckit calls in to say, _"and I've heard the literal gauntlet of bullshit excuses for why I'm actually straight and just don't know it. 'You just haven't met the right man yet, why do you like butches if they look like men?' And when you're gay, it's that you 'just wanna be feminine, you didn't have a strong father figure.' Bi women are accused of making out with women for attention from men, and bi men are accused of secretly being gay. All of us get hit with the daddy issues thing constantly. It's always about how_ important _men are, how our reliance on them is_ supposedly _infallible."_

 

 _"Yeah,"_ Karkat agrees, " _misogyny is pervasive as fuck. What else is new?"_

 

 _"I grew up Catholic,"_ a first time caller, male, chimes in later,  _"and when I came out to my mom, she didn't kick me out of the house, which I was expecting if she told my dad. Instead she said that we weren't gonna tell him, it was just gonna be our secret. She pulled the whole 'I hate the sin, but not the sinner' thing, and you'd think I'd be relieved that she still says she loves me, I guess, but it just felt like, shitty and condescending. You want me to hide this thing that I literally_ just told you  _I can't hide any longer, and I'm supposed to be grateful that you're ashamed of me?"_

 

 _"Jesus, that sucks,"_  Karkat exhausts, _"I'm sorry to hear. Forever not understanding the 'it's okay to have the orientation but not okay to act on it' thing going on in Catholicism. I'd rather you just flat out say the whole thing is a sin than expect someone gay to be celibate their whole life. Because that's what you actually mean. They water it down and say 'not the sinner' just so they don't catch as much flack."_

 

_"Exactly. If even just the temptation is a sin, aren't I still sinning by having the orientation? But God made me perfect. It's like, what do you want me to do?"_

 

_"I understand them not wanting gay people to be promiscuous or have premarital sex, as that's the expectation for straight people too, but if you otherwise follow the rules of Catholicism and wait until marriage to fuck, how is your union any different from theirs?"_

 

He's not pulling any punches. How is this the mind of the guy you were lucky enough to spend that night with? Every eloquent clapback would demonstrate he has a complete understanding of why it's ridiculous he shouldn't be himself. But he told you just weeks ago that he wasn't gay or even bi. Further still, KK is seamless with never referring to himself as the topic of discussion. He threw a hypothetical into his introduction, and honestly, with how solid packed his tirades are from start to finish, you're not surprised no one has flat out asked him whether he's gay or not. Not on the phone lines, anyway - the live message board, which he typically ignores or at least gives the illusion that he's ignoring while on the air, is full of old users asking him to "finally" confirm if he's "one of us." 

 

The next day at school, he stares at you more than he probably has ever, which confuses you as much as it makes you more sure. He wasn't talking out of his ass last night. This is something he's struggling with. You smile every time you catch him looking, but he doesn't return, looking away. You get it - for you it was never religion, but rather that you were afraid of not following the picture of masculinity Bro demonstrated. Don't get emotional, don't open up, don't get fucked. The real reason you came out, which was less "coming out" than it was "well shit people heard I went down on Brendon Nix guess I'm bi," was immature revenge on your guardian's trajectory for your life. Karkat is dealing with more, heavier shit, with hell as a location he could burn in itself, and yet, he watches you.

 

That night you wonder where he's going to take Quadrant, if he's going to swerve left and indulge in lighter topics, keep the heat off himself. Instead you find that he's posted a thread to the main page, informing you his show is indefinitely on hiatus.

 

ifihatemyselfsomuchwhydontihatemarrymyself: THIS IS NOT WHAT I HAD PLANNED FOR TONIGHT, @everyone, BUT WE HAVE SOME UNFORTUNATE NEWS. WBFN IS DECIDING TO DISCONTINUE THE QUADRANT. WE'VE BEEN PRODUCING OUR EPISODES LIVE IN THEIR RADIO STATION EVER SINCE OUR HUMBLE BEGINNINGS OVER A YEAR AGO. IF YOU LIVE IN ENSENA, YOU KNOW WHAT THE REST OF WBFN SOUNDS LIKE. THERE'S A WOMAN WHO QUITE LITERALLY DETAILS THE BRUTAL SKINNING OF ANIMALS PLUS THE DEATH OF THE TAXIDERMY INDUSTRY AT THE HANDS OF MILLENNIALS FOR TWO FUCKING HOURS. THAT'S WHOSE TIME SLOT WE TOOK BY THE WAY, GET WRECKED, BITCH. THE PRIMETIME HOSTS AND OWNER HAD NO ISSUE WITH OUR TWO A.M. TURNED 11 P.M. HORMONAL ADVICE COLUMN UNTIL WE SILENCED MS. BADGERSKIN INTO UTTER OBLIVION.

THE HOMOPHOBIA DISCUSSION WE HAD LAST NIGHT IS NOW THE HIGHEST RATED HOUR ON WBFN RECORD. MORESO THAN THE NIGHT THE QUADRANT GOT TROLLED INTO NATIONAL REACH. DIDN'T FIT INTO REPUBLICAN MORNING NEWS, CHRISTIAN KNITTING INSTRUCTIONS, AND LUKEWARM TAKES ON IMMIGRANTS' DESECRATION OF AMERICAN VALUES. HOW DO THE FUCK DO THEY FIGURE? WHY IT TOOK @ct'S BOSSES THIS LONG TO REALIZE WE'VE BEEN GOING AGAINST THE GRAIN FOR THE WHOLE OF OUR SHOW IS BEYOND ME. BUT, TO MY POINT: THE QUADRANT NIGHTLY IS ON HIATUS INDEFINITELY.

I'M SORRY. I MISS THE FUCK OUT OF THOSE OF YOU WHO CALL ONCE A NIGHT ALREADY. THE QUADRANT APP, THE SHIPPING WALL, THE FORUMS, AND OTHER SIDE PROJECTS WE AUTHORED OURSELVES WILL CONTINUE. PODCASTS OF EVERY PRIOR EPISODE STILL LIVE HERE. UNFORTUNATELY, MY VOICE SCREAMS THROUGH WRITTEN WORD. DON'T THINK FOR A SECOND THAT CHUMBOOK'S ONGOING DEBASEMENT OF OUR LOVE LIVES WILL BE SPARED. THOUGH OUR INTERRUPTION IS SUDDEN, WE'RE LOOKING INTO OTHER STREAMING OPTIONS AND MORE EQUIPMENT. IF YOU HAVE ANY RECOMMENDATIONS, WE'RE AS OPEN AS OUR BUDGET WILL EXTEND. I DON'T WANT OUR INDEPENDENCE TO DELIVER YOU A PRODUCT THAT WON'T LIVE UP TO PROFESSIONAL SOUND.

GIVE US THE TIME IT'LL TAKE TO COME UP WITH A QUALITY FORMAT, BUT WE'RE COMING BACK. TO INCITE EVEN MORE GAY PANIC INTO THE SOULS OF MIDDLE AGED MEN.

LOVE YOU.

<3 KK

 

You could not be more devoted to him if you tried.

 

The responses to his memorandum are overwhelmingly positive; some people new to the show complain, some extremists accuse him of lying, but most react the same way that you did internally to his call for gay panic. Several people ask if the Quadrant has a Kickstarter or donation page. KK catches on and starts a Kickstarter on the fly. You hover over your mouse over the commit button with your custom pledge for what feels like an hour. $500 is nothing to spare, buys the team a decent livestream software and then some, but you get the implications of doing this. Maybe if you did it anonymously, he and his friends would use it for what it was worth. You can't lie to him though, but you also can't let his beautiful show sink because of the dumpass station's control issues. You're angry for him, his leadership was brave. So it's more of a fuck you to WBFN's middle aged men and conservative homophobes everywhere when you finally commit with your name. (It's more about Karkat, you want him to succeed.)

 

Not long after you send the money, he pesters and demands you take it back. You would've been surprised if he didn't. 

 

CG: WHY ARE YOU DOING ALL OF THIS? DO YOU LIKE ME?

TG: lol

 

What does he think? Like is the understatement of the century. He may have been made for you with the way he takes no prisoners. You realize that this couldn't have possibly been conveyed with an "lol" and you desperately wish that your brain would  _just_ _do the thing._ Sometimes you can razor sharp communicate what you mean and sometimes it's this hot mess of anxiety. You decide to just start typing with your broken heart on both sleeves and see if your blood can make any sense. It finally comes out, clumsy as all fuck, but it comes.

 

You tell him everything, in your way.

 

TG: well it all depends on what kinda like like do you mean platonic like or if i could id buy you a dozen roses and leave em on your porch step every day like

TG: im allergic to roses have i ever told you that

TG: probably not seeing as how were so not friends

TG: but its actually really tragic

TG: really eats at my self esteem im just so sensitive

TG: cant look at light for too long animal dander is a life threat and sweet smellin pollen makes your boy break out in hives

TG: anyway whether or not i like you enough to die over romantic gestures

TG: to put it in your words the terezi of the situation

TG: hypothetically if you were to say wanna start secretly going out with me sometimes cause i think we have a connection and i could say buy you milkshake and watch you get a lil milk mustache and not say anything til you realize and curse me out all quick like you do cause i couldve saved your ass the embarrassment

TG: i wouldnt be opposed to that maybe

TG: i dont just kiss anybody like i kissed you

TG: and i didnt expect it to be what it was

TG: and i know you probably regret it even tho i think we came to pretty good terms about it the other day but

TG: im actually kinda interested in this thing

TG: if you are

 

 

"“The curves of your lips rewrite history.”

 

 

CG: WHAT ARE YOU DOING RIGHT NOW?

 

Karkat comes over, which is not what you were expecting. It'd taken him so long to respond that you were starting to regret being alive and having feelings, but his response was bold and simple enough. (What are you doing  _right now. I'm coming to see you now. Time waits for no fucking fool.)_

 

It's nearing ten when you're letting him in through the foyer. His hair is glossy and dripping wet, shining tight curls. You want it in your fingers so badly. He looks more hesitant than he came off online when he _said_ he was coming over, knowing you'd let him, but he's bolstering through it the further he gets through your house. He starts walking up  _your_ stairs, leading you to your own bedroom. Are you dead right now? This is the afterlife and Karkat is your reaper heaven. 

 

You close the doors behind you even though you're alone. Whatever he's planning on doing to you, you're trying to keep all of that energy in a box. He paces your carpet for a moment, staring at the bookshelves and turntables and posters on your wall like he's paying attention to them for the first time. You guess he is. Slow, wandering eyes and shallow footsteps. You stand by your stereo and watch him. Your heart is fucking racing.

 

"How long?" he says then.

 

He's not looking at you when he says it. He's reading some of the titles of your books on the middle shelf. There's obvious surprise there, like he doesn't believe that you can read actual literature. Joke's on him, you unironically pour over late 19th century Gothic Romantic novels like it's going out of style. You may not like school but you can throw down on Charles Dickens. 

 

"How long what?"

 

Karkat doesn't answer. He could be asking how long you've liked him, how long you want him to hold you down between his thighs, how much time he has with you now. Far as you're concerned, all the clocks in this bitch are straight up broken. He can take as long as he wants.

 

"If we're really going to do this," Karkat says, coming closer to where you stand, "I really need you to tell me that this isn't a joke. Like I know you keep saying it's not, but you're kind of not serious about anything."

 

Damn. He knows he can balls out say it because he's right. You're more serious about him than you have been about things in a long time, but your track record speaks for itself.

 

"Okay," you say, stepping closer to him too. "I'll say it again. This is not a fucking joke. When I said I was 'kinda' interested in this thing, I was being facetious. You've basically been blowing my mind ever since I heard your voice. Like uh, really heard it, Quadrant. You just like have no idea how - _who_ you are to people, Karkat. But I can see it now and I don't wanna stop."

 

He binds the space between you.

 

"Then don't."

 

Your first kiss is frantic, messy and groping and hair pulling. He stops that after a while, intentionally slowing you down, guiding you into long, gentle touches that eventually bottom out. He leaves you standing next to the stereo and gets into your bed. He undresses himself alone, making you watch. You play [some of your own music](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nvUeo5sagkA) to set the mood because you're self centered enough to do that and hope it'll work. When Karkat starts rolling his hips along yours to the beat, you fully clothed and him naked on your lap in the center of the bed, you know it does. 

 

If this is going to be anything like the last time, this was only round one. Still, you don't feel nearly as rushed to get there as before. Maybe this could just be it and you could fall asleep.

 

He lies facing you on his side, playing lightly with one of your hands, not afraid to look in your eyes. He's searching you. His head must be full of whatever fucking cinematic prose he's constantly threading. The fact that all of those things you've heard him say on a record - his honesty about his own depression, his takedown on the deaths of the Reagan era, the way he says 'I love you' to listeners and means it - they're all coming from this _person_ _,_ dark and real and blinking and right in front of you. There are so many things you've wanted to ask him.

 

"Hey," you say, soft. "Did you find out who that freshman girl was?"

 

Karkat flexes his hand in yours.

 

"No. I'm assuming she's doing okay, since if someone from our school ever did that, we'd all hear about it. Still."

 

You bring his hand to your lips and kiss it. He shifts his forehead against yours, his warmth radiating through your mind.

 

"She knows you're there," you say. "That's what matters."

 

"Yeah."

 

Your first real date with him is the following night. You drive him an hour out to eat at Zowry's, a restaurant with character, customizeable burgers you can name and the hottest ghost pepper wings in Los Angeles. You take up the black leather seats of a booth and Karkat sits across from you, biting the end of his straw, curls glistening in the rainbow light overhead. This was something you were expecting him to be more nervous about than you, but he's the composed one in this couple, at least tonight. You just can't believe he has his attention this set on you, his black eyes in such intense focus. 

 

"Last time I was here for my sixteenth birthday, Bro tried eating the hottest wings because John dared him to. He got two wings in before he lost it, legit started sobbing. The guy never loses his cool, so it was literally the most satisfying moment of my life and I'm not exaggerating even a little. Bro swears he's gonna come back and own those ghosts, but he never will."

 

Karkat surveys you like you just told him way more than you intended. "Seriously, why do you call him that? It's weird."

 

"What?"

 

"He _is_ your dad, right? Is that even his real name? Is 'Bro' short for something or something?"

 

"Bronislaw. Slavic, means 'glorious defender.'"

 

Karkat snorts. "You're not fucking Slavic. You're lying."

 

Your water glass is suddenly the most comforting thing ever, the way your hands are spinning all over it.

 

"It's like a reverse psychology respect thing. He asked us not to call him anything but Bro or his first name, because, to quote him directly, 'you're my equals.'"

 

Karkat lifts a brow. "I guess that's fair, if not somewhat irresponsible. Rose calls her mother Roberta to playfully signify disrespect. But I think there's something to deferring to your parents with a senior title. They _do_ have control over you, whether you like it or not. Maybe that's the withering Catholic talking."

 

Your customized burgers arrive then, and you're pretty relieved, because this night is way too wonderful to angst about Bro. Karkat's burger looks delicious but respectable, a single patty, white cheddar and plenty of greens, and yours looks as disgusting as you planned it to. Four different types of cheese oozing the buns; pulled pork, candied bacon  _and_ beef patties, two of those; barbecued pickles, jalapenos, fried kale. You aren't here to play fucking games.

 

"Jesus Christ, are you really gonna eat that?"

 

You lower your shades. "You must not know me very well."

 

You talk to each other through most of the meal, his share of the talking more substantial which you mind a single fuck none. It takes a lot out of you but you do finish your burger, down to the soggy bottom bun drenched in grease and every single speck of the batter that came loose from the kale. Karkat eats half of his, only a few fries, and turns down a take home box. Whether he does this because he doesn't want to stuff his face on the first date or if it's because he just doesn't eat much, you can't tell because you're kind of in a coma from the way you just stuffed your face. You don't really do dates, in fact you realize right now that the only other person you ever took out on dates proper was Terezi. She's even more atrocious an eater than you are, so the bar for decorum is frighteningly low.

 

But Karkat laughs when you finally let the waitress take your plate, sliding both of your hands up in the universal sign of surrender. 

 

"Are you sure you're done?" he chides you lightly. "Pretty sure there was still some coagulating fat you could've licked clean off the ceramic."

 

"You'd've liked to watch me do that, wouldn't you?"

 

He snorts, glances offside and shakes his head, sticking his straw in his glass of ice. "Licking something else, maybe."

 

Shit. That is so filthy coming from him,  _him, Karkat Vantas,_ directed at you, you'd swear you misheard him. You can't even be turned on because your stomach could rupture at any second. He must know this, that's why he's teasing you. He bites the end of the straw and his eyes drop to where your hands are holding on to your painful food baby. He is just reveling in your misery and you know it.

 

"Everything hurts," you tell him.

 

"Sucks to suck."

 

When Karkat gets up moments later to go to the bathroom, you tell the waitress when she comes around with the check that it's his birthday, of course. You insist your lover will have the triple decker molten lava cake, complete with the crazy firework candles, instead of the complementary ice cream sundae. You'll pay extra. He returns none the wiser for all of three minutes, until half the staff come out with his ridiculous display: they bring him a giant paper ghost pepper hat and force it onto his head, someone shoots a cannon of pink confetti, they all blare the birthday song from their windpipes so obnoxiously loud, everyone in this part of the dining room is cackling. His eyes go so wide at the flaming sparkler candles and the height of the cake that you wish you could take a picture. He gives you the finger when the restaurant applauds at the end of the song. 

 

"Don't tell me you're having any of this," he says after the motion dies down, sticking a cautious finger into the chocolate lava and tasting. He keeps the ghost pepper hat on.

 

"Nah, but we're gettin' a cake box. This is dessert in two hours."

 

"God help you."

 

For the next month, he spends time with you in early evening hours. Mostly weekdays, every other or so, but sometimes when Quadrant and his sickening academic performance don't require his focus on weekends, he's there with you too. If you were worried about Bro's echoing mansion feeling emptier than ever this year, he's helping you out with that. He's gradually filling your void.

 

Karkat is not that angry overall, you're learning quickly. He's definitely gotten louder and more argumentative with you - his irritation with how much you talk is a pretty constant complaint, and sometimes you're even irritated by that, because does he realize he talks with more abrasive interruption than probably anyone on Earth? -  but his rough turns of phrase are coming from a place of sadness more than anything else. There's still a segment you don't understand about his family, because he won't relay the details. But you gather that Kankri and his father are in a fight right now that makes him horrified to be home. What it's about exactly he doesn't say. Given his internalized homophobia, given Kankri and Cronus are most definitely boning now that you think about it, you don't really need him to explain. His Quadrant episode about his dad still plays in your head on repeat.

 

He kisses good as sin. He's rough and full blown, riotous as his voice. Every time you border his lips, you're rewritten, he makes you feel emotion down to the bone. His reluctance to give you that kind of attention in public is combated by the nasty dark hickies he leaves in his wake. He never comments on the bruises either, which just makes it even hotter. He silently redresses and surveys them over your skin, his eyes dusk with something you initially mistake for possessiveness. Not that that's the worst idea you've ever had, but it's not that he wants to own you. It's that he wants you to know he was always this recessive force, that for years it was underestimation of him that made you ignore him. Like hell it was. He is relentless, he is winning.

 

It definitely catches the attention of people, your discoloration hiding like black on fucking white given your paleness, to John of course included. One day at school he very shamelessly pulls your collar aside in front of half of your friend group and goes, "Dude, when and where are you getting this owned?" A few days later, at another fresh spattering that Karkat gave you while fucking your lights out, "Dave, I gotta admit, I'm jealous," which you fucking ignore. To get him off your neck for real, all you have to do is tell him you've been experimenting with Grindr. Meenah is harder to throw off, but if she knows it's Karkat, she never says. Besides the morning she lets you know, "he's chewing you up," and leaves it at that.

 

John and Terezi are becoming more of a twosome among your friends, and you don't necessarily hate that he leaves your side more often at school to hang around her. He's your person and you'd fight anyone for his happy-go-lucky idiot ass, but you get John exhaustion. You just wonder what they have so much to talk about right now. Terezi was saying hello to you last month, smiling, if icily, but now she's basically giving you the silent treatment. Is it obvious what you're doing? Maybe its a joke that you're keeping Karkat "totally secret" and no one is letting you in for some strange reason. Maybe John told her you disappeared the night of your pool party. No, John is a lot of things, but the one thing you can say with fact is that historically, he does keep your "bets" to himself. For all that everyone in your senior-junior throng knows about every hookup you've all ever had, no one knows that you and him were going at it like rabid dogs your freshman year. 

 

Rose Lalonde, as you would later find out, was always on to everything. She sits behind you in Spanish 1, which you failed your junior year and are taking again. This time you're getting a D+. Karkat talks about her and Kanaya often enough, little anecdotes about how much their groundedness saves his life, that sometimes you imagine you know them better. It's sentimental and stupid, but you're both on occasion. Behind you in class today, while you're supposed to be conjugating verbs aloud with a deskmate, Rose is drawing in pencil.

 

"What's that?" you ask her of the subject, because really, you can't tell. Some kind of eldritch tentacle clusterfuck with wings. It's surprisingly detailed.

 

She doesn't look up at you, pinky finger smudging eraser flecks. "Self portrait."

 

"Nice." She gives you her eyes briefly, at that. "I didn't know you could draw," you offer.

 

"It's no Sweet Bro and Hella Jeff."

 

"Oh shit, are you a fan?"

 

"No."

 

"Okay, harsh. I take constructive criticism."

 

"The 'irony' that your deep fried panels are supposed to look like you spent five minutes Microsoft painting them, but Kanaya says that Karkat says you spend hours. Each. What does that say of the author's claims that they really mean nothing?"

 

That hits you deeper than you expect it to for reasons you aren't really sure of. But the fact that Karkat told Kanaya who told her that about you is. Something.

 

"So last night Karkat introduced me to this lesbian punk band that apparently half of the Quadrant ships, they're like from fucking Toowomba or some shit, like never in a million off chances should a group of normie teenagers in America be forming this big a fandom over these unknown married chicks from a remote jungle in Australia, but you know. That's the beauty of our friend the World Wide Web. They ain't writing those sapphic slaps for any of us though, they're writing them to each other. Some artists are doing their art just to talk to themselves. No one has to know that necessarily."

 

Rose puts her pencil down, smiling. "Sapphic slaps?"

 

"Have you ever heard them?"

 

"I have."

 

"Tell me  _The Great Dividing Range_  doesn't slap."

 

"It's hitting bitches in the face as we speak."

 

You like her. 

 

"So why pretend it's meaningless?" she goes on. "Your comic. I don't know you very well, and even I can tell you're an open book."

 

This conversation was never about your artwork. 

 

"Uh." What else does she know about you from Karkat? "I don't know. That's a good question."

 

"Indeed."

 

She resumes her sketching, perfectly arched wrist, focused on the page.

 

"If you're going to pretend," she says, lips quirking into the precipice of laughter, "you might try wearing a scarf."

 

She's just completely roasting you.

 

"What does he think about me?" you're blurting. It's not like you can hide from her, apparently.

 

"A lot," is all she gives.

 

You wish you could ask her why he's embarrassed to be with you, but you know that's unfair.

 

"If you hurt him," she says finally, smiling still, "I will kill you, David."

 

You know her, Kanaya and him, together and separate, less than you imagine.

 

"Noted."

 

The night before you take him to the fair, the last week of October, Karkat is sitting at one of your mixing booths in the den, using it as a makeshift desk. You wish he would _use_ the sound equipment he's handwriting his next episode on, scribbling black all caps in a tattered notebook. He could just speak it directly into one of your mics, let his voice practice its flow, but he's hardheaded and fiercely independent and kind of neurotic about his process and you expect nothing less of him. His writing is often disjointed, taking a break from his Calculus book and suddenly pulling up the episode drafts, frowning and talking to himself. You watch him more than you half effort update your comic, lying on your side next to your laptop on the floor.

 

He's been quiet for the last ten minutes, scrawling intently. But he does say something that he isn't aware you'll hear. Pauses his hand, stares back at his words.

 

"I'm never someone's everything."

 

When he realizes you heard him, his eyes flicker towards you and then away. You made eye contact with him though, which is more than proof that you're basically so infatuated, even his boring natural state holds you captive.

 

"Fuck me," he says. "Forget I said that."

 

You prop yourself up on your elbows. "No," you say, "what do you mean by that?"

 

Karkat crosses several sentences out of his notebook.

 

You get up and walk to close the space between you, try and look over his shoulder at his notes. Surprisingly he doesn't throw a fit over privacy, violently scatter the pages through the room or anything typically tsundere. He just lets you read it, though it's really hard to read. Really. His block handwriting is knotted and offensively illegible, and that's coming from you. But he's saying something about movies and "CORNY AS FUCK" and "NEVER SOMEONE'S EVERYTHING" isn't as scratched out as the rest of the dark scar.

 

"Tomorrow night is about public marriage proposals," he decides to explain. "Are they romantic, or are they completely selfish on the end of the person proposing? Is it showing the person and the world how much you care, or is it trapping them into wanting to please the viewers?"

 

That is a really specific topic and kind of wonderful. "What do you think?"

 

"I don't know." He buries his face in his palm, apparently deeply mortified, muffling his response. "It'sfuckingromantic."

 

You could just hug him around his shoulders, so you do. Wrap your arms around him comfortingly, your cheekbone to his. His shoulders tense first, then relax. His hand is still pressed over his eyes and mouth.

 

"You're really cute," you tell him.

 

"Stop it," he groans through his palm.

 

"Like you don't even know how cute you are."

 

"I said stop it."

 

But he doesn't physically protest; his hand falls away from his face, traces your forearm. You are all but melting at his soft touch, always are. His skin burns.

 

"We still going to the OC Fair tomorrow?" you ask him.

 

"Yes. I've literally never wanted to go the entire sixteen years I've lived in The Valley, but there's a first time for every overpriced thing I guess."

 

"C'mon, I promise you're gonna love it.  Also saying it's been sixteen years isn't fair, you didn't even know what it  _was_ until you were like, six at the very least."

 

"Shut the fuck up."

 

He grabs the back of your head, tilts you into a deep kiss. 

 

"So are you - " you try to say, but he keeps chasing your mouth, "trying to get - any work done right now? Because - fuck, Karkat, babe - "

 

"That can wait."

 

The fair with him the next evening makes it official: October was the best month of your year. There are still two more to go, but as far as the upward trajectory goes? You're pretty sure Karkat knocking down significant portions of your walls, more than you have by yourself in years, will be hard to top.

 

All night long, you keep thinking about what you heard him say to himself. " _I'm n_ _ever someone's everything."_ You know what he means by that more than you can stomach. It's always been the same for you; the person that you love most loves someone else more, missed moments and everyone experiencing things you're missing out on. He may not be everything to you yet, it's pretty early on for that, but he's damn near the closest thing you've had. It hasn't even remotely occurred to you to try and get side dick. You can't imagine what in god's name you would want it for. He's the real deal.

 

Karkat swears he's going to beat your ass at carnival games, but you show him up a hundred times over. What does he expect when you've played these exact games, dozens of times a year since you were six? He hates it even more that you insist on winning specifically to get him the largest, most obnoxious, hardest-to-carry prize you can. He's finally had the last of your fucking shit when you win him a giant pink bear that's taller than he is. His comic book style outrage - " _W_ _hy_ would someone even make this, what is it for? Is this my fucking bed?" - makes you stop and capture the organic moment. All night you've been casually Snapcrapping your way through highlights, the view from the top of the ferris wheel with the tips of his shoes in the frame, his shadow stretched across the orange plains of the grass at sunset. You add this one of his face to your reel. 

 

#kksbiggestfan ❤︎❤︎❤︎❤︎❤︎❤︎ is there so he knows what he means to you. You don't @ him or anything. But you're his someone.

 

He stays the night, which you're a little reluctant to let him do because he's skipping the Quadrant in order to do it. You don't ever want to get between him and his work. He shushes you when you pull this, claiming he'd be too tired to do the episode even if he went back home. You stay up until one in the morning touching him, and he falls asleep before you do. He really is beautiful to you. You really try not freaking him out about it, but his is face is like, immaculately designed; even the wild sideburns and the strange marks on his jawline. Fuck you are in so deep.

 

As you spiral into sleep, a part of your mind is going,  _oh god, not again,_ even though you have evidence he isn’t going to run.

 

 

“Friendship is far more tragic than love. It lasts longer.”

 

 

You and John were in fifth grade the first time you had a moment. Dirk and Jake had set up a sprawling campsite in your backyard behind the pool area, complete with electric tents, a log fire, ghost stories, and roasted meat from a literal deer Dirk shot in the hills beyond the mansion. The Valley itself was not new to you, but moving into a new giant home that year was the first time you felt like you really lived there. Now that you were rich.

 

John was sharing your multi-room tent with you, wearing a pair of Universe VR goggles, a prototype for what would later become the Spectacles. He was screaming at the Slenderman simulation over his eyes. You were developing a worrying obsession with your best friend's knees all of a sudden. They were red from being scraped, bony but soft, scabs and scars you had the shapes of memorized. They kept knocking into your legs when he got scared, and every time, it felt weird. He was always physically close to you, roughhousing, picking your nose, pantsing you, you know, bro stuff. But lately, something felt. Different.

 

"Oh my god!" John yanked the goggles off. "I can't do this any more, I can't."

 

"Pussy," you said, lowering your comic book.

 

"Hey!"

 

"Slenderman isn't real."

 

"You're not real!"

 

 "Wanna bet?"

 

He wrestled you flat to the tent floor, which was pretty pointless seeing as how you were already halfway lying on it anyway. Though how he ended up somewhat underneath you, flat on his back too, that was a punchy blur. He had you in a headlock, side of your face to his chest, hard enough that you were too lazy to get free but easy enough that it didn't cause pain. He just kept you like that, breathing hard because of his asthma, glasses askew above his forehead. If you felt weird when his knees were touching you earlier, this was. Well.

 

"Can we stay like this?" John said.

 

At that you tried pushing his arm from around your chest, but he was always stronger than you. "I guess. Why."

 

"I don't know. It feels good."

 

The summer after your freshman year, you and him were in the exact same position, but naked in your bed. Five years later and you'd graduated to platonic sex. It was a thing, trust you. But there was one afternoon that summer in which you would realize it was a cursed thing, for you.

 

"Dave?" John said.

 

You looked up at him from his tangled chest. His startling blue were eyes fixed on the ceiling. You used to think you could get lost in those things.

 

"I don't think we should - I want to start seeing other people."

 

You didn't have conversations. Not about this. The lack of mutual explanation for pretty much the duration of your daily games was the part that you thought you loved most. You didn't have to plan around each other, nothing was complicated, there was no bothering with "dates." You got home from school - he always came home with you - and he broke your back for hours. Then you got high and played Luigi's Mansion or played pranks on Jake or did something equally non consequential. Rinse and repeat.

 

"What, you think the fact that we mess around and you have moderately good dick game in the afternoons means we're fuckin' married? You could've been 'seeing' other people this whole time."

 

John possibly looked hurt, but you could never really tell.

 

"Yeah, I know."

 

You thought you could hear a "but" there. But he wouldn't say it.

 

"So, this was the last time," John said finally.

 

You were really annoyed he would think so, but you didn't believe him. This had been an every day thing for almost a year. You needed each other.

 

"Sure, whatever."

 

"I guess it was a really good last time." He smiled, a fingertip trailing your shoulder. "You were _so_ hot when you - "

 

"Yeah yeah, I know, my ass is grass and you made me jizz like a thousand times." You flicked his finger away from your skin. "Stop sweating on me and go get the pizza rolls."

 

He got up almost immediately, which amused you. Stretching and yawning, his long gold body familiar and yours. You stared at him while he fumbled around for his glasses and boxers like you would never admit.  _Don't go,_ your mind said, but you still didn't think he was gone. He would come back. He always came to you.

 

"I have a date with Cassandra from Biology," he said, boxers half on. "We're going to see a drive-in movie."

 

You stared at him quietly, poker face trained. He was laying it on, trying not to hurt your feelings and be casual or delicate or whatever it was John did when he needed to say some shit and wouldn't. It made you want to crawl outside of your skin.

 

When you didn't answer, he just made it worse. "It's not that you are not - " 

 

"John, seriously." You snapped hard on that, a little too much, it surprised even you, but he was oblivious to your tone. "It's not a thing. We are still best friends and you're still a massive dork who thinks taking people to the one drive-in theater left in California is cool."

 

He sighed, and smiled, and looked relieved.

 

"The drive-in is awesome and you are just jealous."

 

He didn't mean it. He didn't know how you felt.

 

"Pizza rolls," you dismissed him.

 

" _Okaaay_ , Master Strider, right away." He winked at you. "Jeez."

 

And it was the last time. You kept waiting, never making a move first, hoping that when he shoved you and picked at the wax in your ear and shotgunned you that it was foreplay. You waited like that for another year. Then you started daring him to sleep with other people, for reasons you still don't understand. Not once was he with another guy though, only girls, no matter how close he sometimes sounded like he was going to, and that just made you feel even worse. Had he been faking it for you?

 

You had nothing but questions. You still don't really have answers.

 

It doesn’t feel like that with Karkat now.

 

For one thing, it’s reciprocated. You aren’t tripping over yourself mentally to explain away what you feel. Sure, you're scared of Karkat in a lot of ways too, but more because of what you know is there than because of what you know is not. 

  

The next morning when you wake up, Karkat's already home. You remember that you posted one of the longest Snapcrap stories you have in a while when you have twenty two thousand goddamn notifications. Why they auto-reset to on every time you delete and redownload the app for security purposes is - they're like your mentions on Twitter, mostly meaningless words you're never gonna read, you should just remember to shut them down.

 

Your Direct Inbox can only be reached by mutual friends though, and even most of them are hitting you up this morning. When Meenah's message says "bitch you better!!!!!!! <3" with an attachment to your picture of Karkat, it dawns on you what you declared last night. 

 

You're about to read the eight things Vriska likely sent you in response - awesome - when John pesters you.

 

ectoBiologist [EB] started pestering turntechGodhead [TG] at 08:48:11

EB: ahem.  
TG: im great thanks for asking how are you  
EB: hmmm, how am i?  
EB: i am just wondering why my best friend didn’t tell me that he took a SUPPOSEDLY one night flame to the fair last night, and not only that, but you put him on snapcrap!  
EG: have any of your followers tried to stalk him yet???  
TG: its too early for this i cant tell if youre fucking with me or genuinely concerned  
EB: oh, sorry. i'm concerned.  
EB: vriska, feferi, kelly from economics, and for some reason cronus have already snapped me this picture. telling me it’s cute that you like him now, and stuff.  
EB: cronus didn’t say that, he just said he can’t believe karkat got to you before he did.  
TG: lmao  
EB: also it...maaaaaaay or may not be on bizzfeed teen.  
TG: what  
EB: the snap.  
EB: does sbhj’s dave strider have a boyfriend???? check out the mysterious swoon worthy boy in this heart emoji selfie, and tell us what you think!!!!  
TG: wait are you being fucking serious his pics on bizzfeed teen  
EB: its buried pretty deep on their gossip page, because you posted it last night, and nylee gender is pregnant.  
TG: holy shit again  
EB: yep.  
EB: but vriska also sent that to me, just now.  
TG: fuck  
TG: hold on

 

You move with the quickness to your desktop to report this to Dirk, because _fuck_ of course some weirdos wanna know why KK’s so cute and what he does, you and your desire to admire him and shower him with pride like you’re a person who can just fucking _do_ that. This was stupid. You can deal with Vriska being Vriska and spreading it to school folk, taking credit for “inside information” as “one of your closest friends.” But what you can’t deal with is anybody whose ass has never sat in a Valley View desk actually trying to find out where KK lives. And you know these people do that shit.

 

turntechGodhead [TG] began pestering timaeusTestified [TT] at 09:00:37

TG: bro  
TG: bizzfeed  
TG: teen  
TT: Figures.  
TG: do you have the shot  
TT: ...  
TG: take it  
TG: [THIS IS WHAT THE REFRANCE](https://pics.me.me/somebody-cool-alpha-one-do-you-have-the-shot-mrow-4122530.png)  
TT: Sorry I’m never secure enough in my dubious conception of masculinity to supply the “Mrow.”  
TG: np  
TG: not that it matters what those creepy pedo airheads did this time but they posted shit about karkat from my snap and i will literally kill them  
TT: Heavens, no. Not literally, Dave.  
TG: maybe  
TG: who knows  
TT: Bro still holding onto my snipers?  
TG: yep  
TT: Good.  
TT: Alright, then.  
TG: yeah?  
TT: They are literally under siege by a massive fucking rootkit.  
TT: Looks like they won’t be needing content on their sites or social media any more either. Any of it.  
TT: The evil is defeated.  
TT: They won’t be online for a while.  
TG: <3

 

You sit back in your desk chair and sigh. When your gaze drifts longingly to your bed, you find Karkat’s imprint still pressed in your sheets. You can almost still smell his hair’s conditioner, mixed in with the fabric of the pillows, and maybe a little bit at the tip of your nose.

 

You know you should’ve just asked him if this is what he wants. If you claiming him proudly is what he meant when he said "I'm never someone's everything." If you’re going crazy, or if when he says he _loves this_ and _loves that,_ he means he loves you.

 

Jesus Dave it’s only been what, like a month? Not really. It started when Terezi described him to you in detail, the way he would talk to her and the way she lost her virginity, nearly a year ago. You distinctly remember thinking that it probably should’ve bothered you, right? Hearing about her talk about getting it on with another guy. A guy you’d had classes with and observed in forced quarters, some kid you would recognize anywhere in a heartbeat. Instead you were just listening to her talk - _soft_ and _heartfelt_ and _kind_ and _he took care of her –_ and filling with something that would manifest months later.

 

Terezi felt so loved by him that it was contagious.

 

...God damn it John, you’re trying to have a moment here. He keeps pinging your pesterlog over and over.

 

And don’t even get you started on John this morning. The way he’s going about this snap leak conversation is rubbing you wrong. Like you know he was just trying to help, and he did to an extent, but does he have to be Like That towards Karkat? You aren’t better than him on some scale, he isn’t beneath you just because he’s a little younger, and John would never actually say that but he _isn’t saying the thing you both_ _really_ _know_ and that’s what’s always been wrong, hasn’t it.

 

You’re just. Not in the John mood.

 

EB: dave?  
EB: oh, i guess you’re talking to dirk now.  
EB: heheheh  
EB: how many times has he owned them by now? like thirty?  
EB: and that’s not counting the other bizzfeeds he’s messed with, or that time he exposed the rapey guy in charge at the parent company.  
EB: and yet, they can’t resist the strider family jewels.  
EB: man, that was fast! rip bizzteen, again.  
EB: sooo.......  
EB: are you gay now?

 

Oh, alright. Just gonna put you into rage mode at nine in the goddamn morning.

  
TG: what  
TG: what do you mean “now”  
EB: i don’t know!  
EB: i just thought......well, you’ve never really had a boyfriend before, i mean i know it’s something you LIKE, obviously................  
TG: that is an excessive amount of ellipses you got there careful they might roll off the kitchen counter  
EB: look, i am just a little surprised is all. to see you like, affectionate about someone special, who isn't terezi anyway.  
EB: because i’ve known you a long time, and you’re always saying how much you hate commitment.  
EB: and because it's...  
EB: well  
EB: karkat.

 

You think back to that night in September you sat next to John in your den, sharing headphones and gleefully bonding over Karkat’s signature fury. He wasn’t any worse an actor in that than you were, and in fact, you were the one who’d egged him into trolling him. Growing up, John was always the last one in the group to buck up on who wasn't cool. In eighth grade you were the one who'd convinced him that Karkat was bait for crushing on Terezi.

 

But this isn’t high school anymore. Well fuck yeah it is, but not for much longer, not for you and John. You realize you’re probably on the verge of a mental acrobatic pirouette for the way John just _typed,_ not said, Karkat’s name. But the whole conversation is a context clue, isn’t it?

 

You just want him to fucking say it to you already.

 

TG: fuck does that mean  
EB: okay...are you saying “fuck” at me right now because you’re mad? or are you saying “fuck” because you casually say “fuck” a lot.

 

You’re saying fuck because he’s a literal gust of wind you can’t catch who you love or you did love.

 

EB: you’re not answering, so i guess, i’ll apologize for something.  
EB: i guess i just thought you were done, after the dare.  
EB: i mean, why didn’t you tell me? obviously you’ve been going out with him a lot. i’ll always support my best friend getting laid, or falling in love, i guess. if you’re in love with him.  
EB: even if i may be a little confused, because karkat does not really act like he likes you in person. i’ve just kind of literally never seen you guys talk.  
EB: but hey, what do i know? he must be cool if you like him this much!  
EB: .......  
EB: sign. i think i’m typing myself into a hole here.

 

“Fuck,” you say to him to through your screen, “how hard is it to fucking tell me you love me.”

 

Soon as it leaves your mouth, you actually feel yourself physically recoiling. Here just moments ago, Karkat filled your mind, and you were soothed. And you want _him._ So you don’t actually speak to each other in front of anyone you know. So? There's a reason for that for him, even if he can't tell you what it is.

 

Further still, Karkat shows up, _emotionally,_ every day, even if it’s only you and him. John is physically with you the all the time, but you wouldn’t have one iota of what he was really feeling. This fight shit you’re doing with him right now is petty. Just eleven year old you, fifteen year old you, coming back to try and close him.

 

TG: i cant talk about this with you right now

 

You watch the three little rolling dots of his promised response. Start and stop, start and stop. It takes him four minutes.

 

EB: ummm okay.  
EB: see you at school tomorrow.

 

That's all.

 

Just when you're about to close out of Pesterchum, Karkat calls.

 

"YOU POSTED THAT PICTURE OF ME ON YOUR STORY?!"

 

Fuck.

 

 


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Coinciding with TIBK Chapters 8, 9, and the start of 10
> 
> This is the world's longest chapter. I'm sorry I'm like this lol. It's just all connected and I have a lot of feelings.
> 
> Someone in the comments of TIBK said they wanted to watch Dirk (and Bro by extension) "going nuclear on Caliborn's ass" and I loved that, so I thought about how their takedown would've gone a lot for this story. I'm giving you as much of it as my knowledge on hacking allows, this chapter and following. Because he deserves nuclear, let's be honest.

 

 

"Society often forgives the criminal."

 

 

When you were eleven and Dirk was fourteen, something dawned on you suddenly.

 

"Do you think Bro's ever killed anybody?"

 

Dirk was sitting at the kitchen table next to you, spinning his spoon through his cereal.

 

"I don't just think that," he said. "I know."

 

If there was one thing you should've known about your brother, it was that if you didn't want the real answer to your question, don't ask him. But it was late for that now. 

 

"Who?"

 

"Remember that guy who used to hang around the grocery store front in Beaumont? Bulky Saudi guy, wore red, always asking Bro for 'his money' when we went in, but nice to us. That guy, his brother. Another guy who used to sell him puppets. Several others."

 

He'd never physically hurt you, you knew that. He'd have to touch you at all anymore. But.

 

"How do you know that?"

 

"I looked into it. Got curious, always had a feeling. Researched their obituaries, autopsies, went to that dark place you never really should. The coincidences were way too convenient, knowing his moves at the time. As it turned out, I was right."

 

You sat there and just. Thought about that for a minute. It dawned on you because you were starting to think that there was no way Bro could've made it this far, this successfully, without cheating at least a little bit. Knowing him, what you were realizing the further you got from the youngest parts of your childhood. The less he came home, the less he cared, the more wealth he hoarded. You didn't remember much about the details of your lives in Beaumont, but this sense that something ominous was following whatever your guardian did out there was evident even when you were little.

 

"It was probably in self defense," Dirk was saying. "Probably. Who knows with that guy, really." 

 

It dawned on you because of, well. How Dirk was becoming as he grew older too. His objectiveness when it came to morbid stuff. That had to come from somewhere.

 

"How is he not in jail?" 

 

Dirk laughed.

 

"What do you think?" He tossed his wet spoon in the air, caught it. "He got away with it. Hid, pulled people's strings. He always does." 

 

 

 "Ideals are dangerous things. Realities are better. They wound, but they're better."

 

 

Monday morning at five a.m. - sleep completely evades you the night after Karkat shreds you over his picture - Bro calls you. His contact is saved as "That Guy" at the moment, which you forgot you even did because it's been so long since he called you. A year or two maybe? Who knows with that guy, really.

 

The vibration has trilled four times before you finally pick up on the fifth. Though you sincerely doubt it, there could be something wrong, some kind of emergency.

 

"What's up?"

 

_"In Los Angeles tonight, possibly tomorrow morning. You doing anything?"_

 

For a second, you think he's going to tell you he wants to do something, with you. "Not really."

 

_"United Way is teaming up with Friends of Ferrari in Bel Air, hosting a charity mixer in the dealership, I'm doing a set. Tickets go for a grand but they gave me two, fuckin' who knows why since I'm the entertainment and don't even need 'em. I'll send these to you, if you wanted to come. Bring a special friend to impress. Or just, you know, John."_

 

You snort, near incredulous laughter. _Special friend, or just, you know, John?_  This is so his way of gauging whether or not he's your best friend with benefits, it wouldn't be the first time. He must be extending this gesture of care, as well as trying to get you into a show, because he's feeling guilty. For once.

 

It's going on two months since he last showed up randomly, but something in you aches to find out he's coming home with an intention. Thinking about you during it. Though you have no reason to all things considered, you miss your unattainable guardian, or at least knowing where he was. Further still, it was one of the best parts of your life whenever you got to see him perform a gig up close, when you were young. His sheer power and genius when he takes on a stage is something you've always looked up to and tried to look at objectively; there's no way you'd have the inclination to rhythm and sound you do without his genes informing your body. Dirk Strider Senior, if he didn't distress you by being your relation, would be a hero of yours for his legendary production alone if nothing else.

 

The amount of people you've introduced to Bro is one, special or no. John Egbert, when you were six. That was before he was mega famous. Most of the guys at your school you hooked up with either casually or straight up asked you if they could meet him, which was why you never kept things going with them for more than a week or two, tops a month. Terezi said she never wanted to meet him, which was when you knew you liked her.

 

Five years ago, she did accidentally run into him - literally - one night while she was following the robots around and asking them the most obscure trivia she could think of. You hadn't known he was home, upstairs in your bedroom updating your  _hip hop ain't dead_ blog, when she came back up and reported the collision.

 

"Did he say anything to you?"

 

"'Watch where you're going.' I held up my cane. He said, 'Sorry. Carry on.'"

 

"Lmao."

 

"That is the bulkiest man I have ever not seen. Walking into his torso was like hitting a brick wall with my everything! Are you sure he is a human?"

 

"No actually, I'm not."

 

"In conclusion, I've decided he is the worst."

 

"You're tellin' me."

 

If you hadn't just potentially ruined everything you had with Karkat - his eight minute rant from yesterday morning is still spinning around in your head - you would consider inviting him to this event. Something special. Though bringing him anywhere near Bro Strider wasn't a thing you were looking forward to.

 

"Uh, yeah," you say flatly into the phone, because you don't want a trace of how you're feeling, re: Karkat or this invitation in general, getting through. "I could probably convince John to get into that." You're also unsure you'll bring John, because of yesterday. But you can't go alone, not to see him. If you even go.

 

_"Cool. Email sent."_

 

He hangs up.

 

"Thank you, I guess."

 

The desire to skip school this morning is overwhelming. You mindlessly drag through your routine. When you're hopping in the Ferrari, your mind is reactivated because you're about to see him. Karkat told you not to speak to him until he speaks to you, and it least it was "until," not "never." But how are you going to see him, with how bad you feel, and not want to make things right in person?

 

You drive through the sunrisen hills of The Valley, hear him in your memory again:

 

 _"YOU POSTED THAT PICTURE OF ME ON YOUR STORY!?_ _...Shit. Fuck. Sorry. Deep breath fucking in...deep breath fucking out._

 

 _"Okay, here's something coherent. This is exactly why I didn't want anything to do with your obnoxious self centered celebrity schtick at first. With you? Sure. But the shtick? Thanks, I fucking hate it. Because where do you end and @davestrider begin? You wanna know what's wrong with you? Rich people? You think you know what_ everyone  _wants, because it_ must _be what_ _you_ _want, right? That's was your whole thing in the beginning of this here. From behind your little mask. Maybe we could've collectively collaborated, Quadrant and your inane jpeg comic. Maybe I did want your fans adding a hell of a lot interesting thought to my show, maybe I'm grateful for it today. But did @davestrider think to fucking ask me_  how  _I might have been most comfortable easing my way into that_ _? Nope! He assumed I would inherently understand what he was getting at with his bullshit methods and fall to my knees in prostration. Oh, Teen Heartthrob Strider, thank you for blessing my plebeian ass and noticing little old nobody me!_

 

 _"Delete the picture. If that wasn't obvious. Jesus, my hair looks weird in this. Maybe I'm 'not a real millennial' because I think WhatPumpkin is literally fucking evil, do you know what they're doing to the Ensena National Forest right now? The environment in general? But that's another tangent. I_ have  _an account on the Crap so I can keep tabs on my mutual people who like it, but that reason is exclusively fucking obligatory. Other than that? What is the point? I mean, seriously, Dave. It didn't really bother me that much but how hard would it be to not use your phone at all when we're having a moment? Like the thought process, I don't understand it. Why does what social media thinks about our relationship matter? The whole point of the Quadrant - or at least, it's supposed to be - is to remind people that when you_ do  _find that person, you have to_ disconnect.  _Physical, you know, the real world? But being a pixel world celebrity and having the 'Dad' that you do, you're not really oriented to prioritize that._

 

 _"Fuck. How many people looked at it? Don't answer that. I guess you didn't @ me which I'm a little surprised about. But these motherfucking shallow bitches at our school sometimes - no, no, I'm not even going to go there. Instead, this: remember when you showed me that horrific fucking drawing you made of yourself, that night in your jacuzzi? Think about that with me here. I'm sure that monstrous thing can't possibly, literally be what you see when you look in the mirror because - fuck you if you think I'm complimenting you about that right now - but I know you're always pointing out these tiny little details about my face that you think are great that I'm like, where the fuck? And I just. I was never going to be the radio personality with posters of their face everywhere, that's not what I wanna do. Even if it_  may  _be a nice face,_ may,  _to each their own. I'm controlling about it. Like, selfies. Don't take them, have you noticed? It's just not really a thing! Probably never will be._

 

 _"So yeah. I'm fucking pissed and I'm having yet another new and shiny kind of meltdown I'll have to create a new file extension for, if you didn't gather._   _When you see me at school, if you see me online, don't talk to me until I talk to you. Okay? Don't. Fucking good. ...You're still on the line apparently and just sat there and listened to all that, so I suppose I'll see your rejoinder, if you have it."_

 

You said absolutely nothing during. He didn't ask any non rhetorical questions or give you any pauses to except at the very end. All you could do, because you were stunned by him,  _again,_  was say sorry in every way you knew how. 

 

"Well," you said first. How did you start? "About the picture. I'm sorry, I know, I know, you know I get like this, I get - too excited. A-about you. I'm just so proud of you and how far  _we've_  come, you and  _me,_ not the @ sign, and last night was only as special as it was because of you, and people already know about me being bi and I forget everyone isn't like me because you're right, I was raised a certain fuckin' really selfish way because of my 'dad' and I'm unlearning and I'm sorry, Karkat. I'm really, really,  _really_  sorry."

 

And he paused. You could hear his breathing. For most of the call, you'd felt like you were listening to another episode. But this was  _him,_ the real person and he was processing and thinking. What was he thinking, live?

 

_"I - I appreciate that. But 'really sorry' can't make people unsee the picture."_

 

He's out now. His family is the way it is and now he's out. That's the one thing he didn't address the entire eight minute spiel, the elephant he sidesteps eloquently around, that you tried to apologize specifically for but he didn't acknowledge. That's why he's really pissed and hurt. And you, why, why didn't you  _think?_

 

Just because  _you_ know hiding your attraction to guys is a lost fucking cause and always was, just because  _you_ can't imagine why he would hide anything real about himself, how unbarred and raw and beautiful and open he is about so many other things - that's why you didn't think about it when you posted it, honestly. Because sometimes you feel like Karkat already  _is_ out, to everyone who matters but the family. And doesn't realize. Maybe some of the people at this school he's never going to actually care about - he is very picky about who he chooses to be close to and value and you admire it and maybe even envy it a little - maybe they'll whisper little things he'll never hear, about the only side of him they see,  _Karkat._ But aren't he and KK one and the same? And doesn't everyone who loves him for who is see both?

 

KK won't ever say it in so many words, but you've noticed that he doesn't deny anything either. Not recently; his earliest episodes had a little denial, but you can't blame him, he was just shy of fifteen. Today? He has  _the_  most internalized homophobia you've ever seen, so internal, it will never harm anyone else but him. His show itself is a beacon for his community and he knows it. So then isn't KK himself also a beacon? Even if he won't say or type the word? Because one of the things you're learning is that there's no such thing as indecision or neutral positions. Bro and his negligence have taught you that. He thinks that just because he never tells you tells you directly, "I don't want to be here," "I don't like you," that that's not what his absences convey. Because if he did want to be with you, wouldn't he just?

 

By virtue of embracing the same sex devoted on the Quadrant to such a degree that Karkat embodies the character of that love so plainly, even if he can't say...you just want him to know he's already there and you support the hell out of it.

 

But it isn't your place to make him know anything. He has to see it himself.

 

When you arrive to school in the morning, you can tell everyone is talking about you. Or at least the paranoia that they are is more significant than ever. 

 

"Bitch!" You walk into the midst of your familiar long table, avoiding eyes under your Spectacles, and overhear Meenah going off on Kankri, hand claps and all. Those are usually brutal. You sit down alone to eavesdrop this one. "Who the fuck fucking  _cares_ if he gets famous 'too'? Why are you even worried about it? 'Cause trust me, it's not like he's takin' your flat ass with him to the top if he does! You ain't involved either way not only 'cause you boring as shell but 'cause when have you ever supported him? You done nothin' but talk trash the kid since you moved here and I still ain't seen most of what the fuck you were even talkin' about the more I get to know. Don't you got more Bible to read or somefin'? Let him live."

 

You love her. You don't tell her enough.

 

From where you sit alone, you have a slim window through clusters of students to a view of the L-shaped table. Karkat, Rose, and Kanaya are sitting there now, having a close, heartfelt discussion. You can't read his facial expression from here, but his body language says he's terrified. Kanaya gets up, hovering over Karkat for a moment, and leaves Rose and Karkat alone. Rose is soothing him with her words, you'd imagine, by his gradual release of his physical tension. You wish there wasn't this great divide. But you look down at your hands because you don't want him to feel your stare. He's probably got enough of those ahead.

 

John comes in and sweeps by everyone at the table, sitting within your quarantine and next to you on the bench with ease.

 

"Why didn't you ever tell me that  _Con Air_  was the worst movie?" He looks distraught, and he never does, so of course, it's about Nic Cage. "I was watching it last night, and all of a sudden, it was just the worst! I couldn't get past the stupid junkyard scene where Cyrus makes a little model out of rocks and stuff, just so he could tell the criminals to surround some army guys and shoot them. That was pointless! And all the heavy handed scoring? Oh my god, the music makes  _everything_  into some federal fucking crisis! Like oh, man, some  _minor characters_ are being introduced in slow motion! My childhood is crushed."

 

He's acting like the weirdness from yesterday morning wasn't something that happened, and you're kind of relieved for the moment. The energy in the quad right now is making you anxious and he's comforting. To John you have never been what they see, you're his regular boring best friend who you used to play cards with when you were ten. He's immune to the rumor mill surrounding your celebrity, because he really knows you. He was there, for your life.

 

" _Con Air_  was always shit dude," you say, "I remember telling you exactly ninety eight times over the course of, I don't know, twelve goddamn years?"

 

"I don't remember that and I wish you had warned me." He smiles. "That is not to say that Nic still isn't the best, he was just  _not_ a good actor in that. Everything else is of the highest quality."

 

"You want me to warn you about that one too?"

 

"No, because it is a lie. I will literally shove my fingers into my ears if you do that."

 

"Well get those digits ready, hope you cleared out your wax. Did you shave 'em? 'Cause you have ear hairs man, sorry to tell you. Like ear  _curls,_ how is that even possible? Those manes are so matted can you even hear me right now?"

 

He's pinching your earlobe, and you've managed a smile, when someone walks up behind you.

 

Terezi basically pulls John upright by the forearm away from the table and he doesn't object one centimeter. Follows behind where she leads like a lost puppy, nodding eagerly at whatever she's whispering to him. Can you blame him? For the Terezi of it, no, she's as stunning as they come. But you could use some support right now and they must be talking about you. You don't want whatever this is and however it's trying to make you feel to happen so you get up and starting walking towards the senior wing. When you look back, they are both plainly staring in Rose and Karkat's direction.

 

In first period, Tavros dares you to dress the piglet you two are dissecting in A&P in a paper ballgown, so of course you do. Tie its dolled little pink self up with several strings around the limbs, attach them to your forearms, and walk it around the classroom. Mr. Davenport shouldn't be surprised, it is  _you_. None of your teachers give even a fraction of a shit that you're some famous guy's kid, which is fine. You always thought at least one of them would though. But you hope your disruption gives people a reason to talk about you re: something else, anything else, that isn't your new relationship. Though several of your A&P classmates Snapcrap your piglet corpse, of course it doesn't work. You knew it wouldn't.

 

Before second period, you overhear two girls in your grade talking in the worst whispers you've ever heard as you trade books in your locker. 

 

"I didn't think he was actually gay, I mean people lie about hooking up with him all the time."

 

"Do they though? That secretsofvalleyview Instagrub has way too many similar comments from gays talking about how big his dick is."

 

"Lol. Why wouldn't they lie about that too?"

 

"Fair."

 

You graze by them as you walk past them in the hall as close as you can without touching them. Glance back over your shoulder and they're staring after you. Why do they do this? You have worse grades than them you bet and you pick your nose and you're just some guy they've been going to school with. Even some of your peers who don't know why you have followers or know who Bro is watch you and make you feel like this. Never have you wanted to be so invisible.

 

When you walk into the bathroom in the senior wing, Karkat is standing in front of the sink, blow drying his hands.

 

"Oh, shit."

 

He regards you, flick of the eyes. No one is in here. You are immediately blushing, being alone with him.

 

"I didn't know you were in here," you tell him, "I swear."

 

"No, I'm in your territory." He's moving towards the door. "So I should just leave it - "

 

"I - wait."

 

Karkat waits. His back is to you, but he turns around. This is the first time you've been in his space during school since this whole thing started. He's so familiar, you've mapped every inch of his skin in private, and he's doing that thing where he's resisting with his posture and stance but his eyes are so vulnerable.  _Until I talk to you._ Did this count? He's not leaving and he's giving you that look that says  _I miss you._ So you try.

 

"I'm really, really sorry, I know I said it like a million times yesterday after you got done yellin' at me for eight whole minutes straight, and that's not a complaint, I completely deserved that shit and it was actually really impressive, not to make light or fuckin' belittle your rightful anger or - "

 

Now he's giving you that look that says  _stop talking._

 

"Fuck."

 

This didn't count.

 

"Are you done?" he says.

 

"Yeah."

 

"Listen, you know what?”

 

He aggresses your space; really in it, his foot between your shoes, his fired gaze inches from your face, his body heat lashing you.

 

“You could've just  _asked me._ If you wanted to tag that picture with hearts and basically announce to the whole school and your millions of followers that you spend some of your nights exclusively with a little ragheaded thing like me, you could've asked. I may not have said yes, but I might've at least considered the idea."

 

He has your heart out in the open and at this point you just want him to have it.

 

"Would you have, though? I know I said I was cool with it being a secret but that was only 'cause I knew you wanted it to be, and fuck. I really like you, Karkat. Fucking. A lot."

 

Understatement. His pinched brow is a show of his resistance and his eyes all over your lips is a show of his reciprocity. You want to kiss his frown smooth, erase all that history and pain that won't let him come out to himself. Maybe let him rage it out on you, he gets so demonstrative. Sits on top of you and  _demands_ that you be still, demands you stop writhing so pathetic when he gives it to you so good you could just fall in -

 

He pulls you in to kiss him, hard. He lets his aggression out on you the way you love, shoving you back into the ridge of the sink, slotting his thigh between yours, biting and handling you. You will probably get your heart killed by this some day but you're okay with it. His hand slides under your shirt and rakes over your chest -

 

When Marco from football walks into the bathroom. Karkat jumps back and wipes his mouth with the back of his hand and you recover in record time to trade a nod and a “yo" with the guy...you actually gave Marco a hand job in here once but nope that's going back in repressed memory lane. Your significant other looks alarmed by the intruder but he doesn’t abscond. At least not yet.

 

The bell rings above your heads. It's hard not to watch Marco hold his dick above the urinal in one hand and text with the other because it's really weird that he does that. But he leaves quick, without washing his hands.

 

"Did you know that guy?"

 

"Yeah, that's Marco. He never washes his hands." Which is exactly why the hand job was one sided.You're glad you didn't just say that out loud.

 

"This is not me totally forgiving you, by the way," Karkat states. "I still have Kankri to deal with and Terezi is going to hate me forever, or maybe she really doesn't give a shit and was just saying all that prosecution garbage earlier to joke and prod with me? I don't know - " He talked to her? " - stop, don't talk, I'm not done - and I'm probably never going to know. My point is you're still in the dog house with my collar and leash on you until I say you're not, got it?"

 

You hesitate, still a little breathless. From listening to him storm, his mouth over yours.

 

"Dog collar and leash, huh?"

 

Why are you like this?

 

“I could just slap you across the face.”

 

 _Shit,_  that's why.

 

"Oh, please slap me, beautiful, I've been bad and I deserve it - "

 

"Get out of this bathroom before I never speak to you again."

 

"That'll do it, right, got it. Sorry. Later."

 

But you catch a hint of a smile on those lips before you go.

 

The next time you see John at lunch, he's not with Terezi. You're less bothered by the things you've been hearing about yourself all day - Karkat partially ending the distance between you relieved it somewhat - but you could stand to be less, John will further ignore it with you in solidarity. Plus the fact that Bro called you -  _called you,_ like on the phone with his voice - is so ridiculous that you need to process it with someone. He's really the only one you can talk to about it, because he knows. He was there.

 

"Dude, what?" John says when you tell him. "And it  _wasn't_  because he was having some kind of emergency? Where has he even been for the last two months? Let me guess, he didn't ask, 'How are you, Dave? How's school? What grade are you in again? What are we having for dinner?'"

 

"We spoke in detail about the economy and he told me he was buying me a pony and we spent eight minutes telling each other how much we loved each other."

 

"Ha!" John knees you under the table. "I'm sorry, babe." If you're looking at him like he's growing another head for calling you that, he doesn't notice. But you appreciate the meaning behind it, you guess, the unirony of it. "What did he want?"

 

"Tickets to some charity event at Ferrari he's performing behind in the city tonight. He made sure to tell me they're worth a G."

 

"Oooo, cool." He rolls his eyes. "Is it actually cool though?"

 

"Could be. Haven't looked at the email 'cause then he'd be winning."

 

He holds out his hand. "I am prepared to take this bullet."

 

John scrolls through the ticket email with his calloused thumbs, his glasses falling down his nose. The twitch you have to right them is not something you are acknowledging, no sir. 

 

"Well, they're gonna be showing off the new F8 Tributo," he reads, "which will be totally tech savvy and self driving I bet, so that is awesome. Plus two of the other 2018 models, and letting people take pictures in them! Open bar, silent auction, dance floor, giveaways. Those things  _may_ be cool,  _maybe_ _._ "

 

"Sounds pretty alright."

 

"So what do you think?" John slides your phone back into your jeans pocket for you, which is also not something. "Is his apology kinda-accepted?"

 

"Kinda don't wanna see him ever again. Kinda wanna show up and completely ignore him the whole time to spite him."

 

"Both are good options." John fixes his glasses, ruffling his unreasonably pretty lashes against the panes. "I haven't seen him in a long time, now that I think about that, but sometimes I think about Twittering a list of the weird things he's done to us over the years and doing the @ thing to him and CPS."

 

You snort. "Is Child Protective Services on Twitter?"

 

"I don't know. Probably not!" 

 

The twitch you have to bring him with you tonight is less twitch, more solidarity in ignoring. 

 

"If you go with, I'm down."

 

John grins. "Sounds like a plan."

 

It would not be, though, much of plan.

 

Later in the day, you're thinking of things you shouldn't again. Damn his comfort. There was one last moment, post freshman year. You and John would officially bite the bullet during sophomore year, late that fall semester when you were marathoning footballers-cheerleaders respectively. That day there was that girl who let him run along to sit in your room with restless energy.

 

You knew he was being weird but you weren't gonna press it, trying not to go there. You two were smoking from one of your bongs and you could tell by the way he was looking at your mouth that he wanted a shotgun. Those days you usually waited for him to ask for it blatantly, because it'd been over a year and he still hadn't touched you again the way that you wanted, but that day you were positive of this. What you assumed was that it would be tame, boring and quick, like they had been all year.

 

What was different was the way he held onto you. No more smoke to be passed but his lips were still yours. He brought his hands to your biceps, drawing his blunt nails down them and pulling you in.

 

You pulled back, and clearly your expression was judgmental.

 

"Man, I'm really sorry." John ran a hand through his hair. "I am just like. Really horny."

 

You were inventing he said that. You were imagining. "Didn't you just get - "

 

"Jess didn't really finish me. She did hers! Then she stood up, patted me on the butt, told me I was 'pretty,' and left me in the locker room."

 

You pressed your lips together. "Like, she just said...'you're pretty.'"

 

"Yep. Exactly that."

 

You couldn't help yourself or your selfish; you laughed, looked down to observe him.

 

"I am not telling you this as like. A thing." But John was watching you observe. "I promise. It'll go away."

 

You raised a brow. "You want it gone now?"

 

John let go of a breathless laugh. "You know I do. But you really don't have to."

 

So you slid off the bed to your knees. "But you know I want to."

 

So he let you.

 

"God, I'm gonna go in like a minute."

 

"Not if you keep talking."

 

It really did only take a minute. And he was not supposed to, but he guided you up to kiss him afterwards. You were so dizzy.

 

"Thanks," he said, nose to yours. "I love you."

 

You snapped away.

 

"What?"

 

His expression slowly fell.

 

"...Not like, um. Thank you, is what I meant. I needed that."

 

This day returns to play in vivid form in your head when your Twitter decides to tell you you have a Memory from two years ago, during sixth period. The selfie with him you posted right before that happened loads onto your screen. Why you haven't deleted like all of your social media from your phone in light of what a fucking mess it's made your day today is beyond you, but you're doing it now. Maybe you won't use any of it for a while. ...You'll probably put Twitter back on when you get bored in seventh period.

 

Just after seventh - Twitter won - you decide you'll do John and probably yourself a favor and pick up a gram for this thing tonight. You may need the high if you're gonna be in the presence of Bro and a stage but ignoring him. You'll try not to over do it, or do it all and just give it to John, or that's what you're saying. Cronus is meeting you at his locker and you've been waiting for twenty minutes but you have to wait around to go to detention, so you guess you can do it standing here or whatever.

 

Cronus walks up with Kankri the shadow and gives you The Handshake that you assume will have the bag in it, but it doesn't. You just touched his hand for  _nothing._

 

"Got you right here in a sec, chief," Cronus says, knocking his locker door with his fat knuckles.

 

"It's in your locker," you state incredulous, because drug dogs. You thought he had brain cells enough to keep it in his car and that that's where he just was all this time, but it is Cronus. "Are you an idiot?"

 

"Wouldn't start with the fuckin' namecallin' seein' as how I'm doin' you a favor."

 

"Okay." He's really the worst.

 

Cronus looks past you at two guys he knows across the way and skips your presence down the hall. He may be coming back and will forget you insulted him so you stick around. Kankri is also sticking around, staring virtually through you in front of him to watch over Cronus. Wringing one of his hands around a wrist. You'd call it a nervous tick, but his wrist looks dark.

 

"You good, man?" you ask him.

 

Kankri regards you with narrowed eyes, pulling his sleeve over the wrist.

 

"Perfect."

 

They are a blurry nightmare that you've been meaning to bring up to Vantas the younger.

 

"How much?"

 

Kankri is looking at you impatiently, but you really don't think he means what you're thinking.

 

"How much what?"

 

He rolls his eyes with drama, completely a mirror of Karkat in a way that makes your heart flutter all muscle memory. Brings his hands to Cronus's lock, knows the combination.

 

"A gram?" you say, but you really don't think -

 

"Was that a question, or do you know how much you want and would you like to stop staring at me like you think I'm my brother?"

 

You're almost speechless, but you manage. "Gram'll be fine."

 

His smooth rendition of The Handshake has you in mental shambles.

 

"Run along now," Kankri directs you, pulling a bottle of hand sanitizer out of his pocket.

 

Detention is crowded. You set yourself up on the floor against the back wall, thinking about Karkat and his brother, now that you're sure. How obviously Kankri's gotta be deep in Cronus's mess if he's doing those transactions for him _._ How Karkat has been running from something that may even be genetic, though Karkat's got a lot more knowledge and sense to navigate the MLM world with at least. You wonder if what happened in the bathroom with him means that you're good by him now. Not that you're out of the dog house. But how awful for him - for both of you - to be judged by people who have no business judging you, all day, just to walk away from your hard won romance. Shouldn't you do this now, be happy together in defiance, to spite them if nothing else?

 

Karkat comes to sit next to you during detention, close enough to mend.

 

 

When he requests that he come home with you for a while, you give him a massage for an hour, him on his stomach on a couch in the den, you kneeling over him at his thighs. It's an extension of your apology, sure, but it's also because he complains of the knots in his back often enough.

 

"I'm sorry I said all that to you. Yesterday morning." 

 

You lean down to kiss the base of his spine. "It's okay."

 

"No, it's not. I can't keep running my mouth like that just because I'm stressed."

 

You reassure him. "I'm really fine."

 

"That  _is_ what I wanted you to do. Maybe not - on Snapcrap, necessarily, but the  _meaning_  behind what you did. I want - "

 

He doesn't finish.

 

You press the heel of your palm into the biggest knot over his left shoulder, grinding slowly.

 

"Fuuuuckkk me."

 

You feel his voice run down every bone in your body.

 

"Is that what you want?"

 

He reaches a hand up to swat you in the thigh.

 

So you apply pressure, and he groans. Every time the knot cracks under your skin it shoots satisfaction through you. You're imagining that this ball of tension is where all the stress in the Karkat is stored. You can and you will destroy it. When he starts shifting his hips under you, rutting them up against the couch, you alternate to your thumbs to pinpoint the pressure. Slide them hard around the thick of it, move your weight down a little so you're sitting on top of the pillows he was blessed with as a backside. You use your new brace to put your whole back into pressing both hands from his lower back all the way to the top. He's basically shivering. You could probably do this for the rest of your life. 

 

"You still feeling good?"

 

"I need you to do this for the rest of my life."

 

You stop at that. 

 

"Okay."

 

He was having the same thought you were.

 

He turns his head to glare at you with one eye open.

 

"I'm sorry, am I fucking dead yet?"

 

He smiles immediately after he says it.

 

He's killing you softly.

 

When you later interrupt the virtual talk he's having with his Quadrants friends - they look just like you've always imagined them somehow and you may be a little bit starstruck seeing their faces - it occurs to you when he pretty much instantly closes his laptop, blocking you from them, that there's something wrong. But he won't give you time to press whatever it is, because he's telling you to drop your towel and you are completely speechless by what he does next.

 

He leaves not long after. You miss him already, wanted to spend the rest of the night with him.

 

When you get back upstairs to your room, you check on your phone. John is calling you, probably about tonight's event.

 

But you don't want him to come anymore.

 

 

"I find a strange pleasure in saying things to him that I know I shall be sorry for having said."

 

 

The evening you and Dirk returned home from your birth mother's funeral in Texas, it started. That was when you realized your childhood with him was the culmination of something greater, that you wanted be next to him for the rest of your life. You couldn't have possibly known what that'd look like, you were  thirteen. But things can feel sure at that age. Underdeveloped brain enough that a year feels like an eternity. (Now you're seventeen and Vegas was four years ago, how did that happen?) Not yet old enough to have really experienced heartbreak. (Though a few days before it, you'd had one of the worst ones.) Just a teenager enough to feel like if you could run away from home with one other person and get away with it, you would. (You could've died and Bro was nowhere to be found.)

 

"Hey, I never knew my mom." John was sitting with you on the balcony off of your bedroom. His leg was on top of yours, swaying from side to side. "I mean, she wasn't some person who I never met, she died when I was too young to remember. But you never needed something like this to make you a better person or anything like that. You are already the best person I know."

 

You rested your head on his shoulder. He'd been talking to you for what felt a year now, even though it'd probably only been a few hours. You couldn't say anything, hadn't been able to since your flight got back, and he was okay with that. He was comforting you anyway.

 

"I think she knows you were there." John walked his fingers across the top of your leg. "I still believe in heaven, even if science always says it's not a thing. Even if it's not, supposedly people have souls too. So whether she was an angel over there, or her soul was still in the uh - what do they call those things? Crap, I cannot  _believe_ I just forgot this word - "

 

"Casket."

 

"The casket.  _Duh._ Ahem. So whether she was an angel or her soul was still in the - that sounds creepy, why am I saying it like that? You get what I'm saying, right?"

 

You snickered against his shoulder, rubbing your face against his skin in the affirmative.

 

"There's an afterlife, I know it. So maybe like, she was always sad because she never got to see you, but now she gets to look over you all the time."

 

You didn't believe what he was saying, but you wished you did.

 

"I know you don't believe in things like that." He walked his fingers over to where your hand was curled on the ground, poking at your palm. "But I believe in it, and I'm praying, and prayers work even if the people you're praying for don't believe."

 

He laced his fingers through yours.

 

"And I love you. Today was a really shitty day for you, but Dirk is finally man enough to face me again in dominoes, and Jake is gonna do way worse than you, and our tournament is gonna be epic!Let's go see if they set it up."

 

You were feeling better by the time you were seated at the green table in the parlor, surrounded by your brothers and the boy you thought you loved, red Solo cup of wine and dominoes in front of you.

 

When Bro Strider walked in to the room, however, all four of you went completely quiet.

 

Bro said nothing to you or Dirk about your morning excursion to Texas. Didn't he know? He had to have checked his statements.

 

"I'm doing the iHeart Radio festival this weekend. In Vegas. Driving up tomorrow morning, early. You guys can come with if you want. Can't get you into the concert, but you're into the hotel."

 

Dirk was the only one bold enough to respond.

 

"We're two pairs of sixteen and thirteen year olds, respectively. What are we supposed to do in Vegas?"

 

Bro looked surprised for a half a second. That you - the group of you, with Dirk as your spokesman - were resisting.

 

"More to do in Vegas than strippers and booze."

 

He left the room, and you all exchanged looks. Ones you'd shared many times before in your chosen family.

 

"Well,  _should_  we go, fellows?" Jake said first. "I do say I've always wondered what it is about that city. Does what happens there really  _stay_ there? How the fuck does  _no one_ ever tell?"

 

"He obviously feels like shit," Dirk said. "I'm almost embarrassed by how blatant a beg that was. He might as well've been on his knees."

 

"Well, my Dad and Nanna are turning my house into an uncomfortable bake shop right now," John said, "because my ninety eight year old Great Nanna who has cancer has still been living in my room for the last two months. So I would kind of like another reason not to go home! My Dad will probably think it is cultured, and tell me to go to the museums. But I also think it sucks that this is Bro's way of apologizing to you guys!  _Grrr,_  but at the same time, those commercials on TV always make it look like such a party, even for a kid. They have a roller coaster that wraps around a building! I mean."

 

You snorted quietly, as that would be what John was most impressed by.

 

Dirk was looking at you now, serious. Only you two shared this look. You were the deciding factor.

 

You were hurt - beyond it, actually, circling back towards numb - but still thought would feel cathartic to blow more of his money in revenge. Hit him where it hurt. It would take more years to realize that men with endless money can never be spent.

 

"Fuck it," you said. "Yeah it's ass all the way back that he waltzed in here after knowing me and Dirk just looked at his baby mother dead in the ground and offered us all a three night stay in Jackson Neverland instead of saying 'hey, sorry I'm a bold face liar' or whatever. But they have a  _roller coaster_ wrapped around a  _building._ " You smiled. "And strippers. And booze."

 

They all caught what you wagered. Your lives felt sad and motionless at this moment, and you were two pairs of sixteen and thirteen year olds respectively. You could use a vacation, thought you deserved it. And maybe Bro still felt too powerful to defy. 

 

"Well, if the strippers are male," Jake said with a mischievous grin, "I'm game."

 

"It's like you're always inside my head," Dirk said.

 

"I am not sure how I feel about the strippers," John said, "but why not? Bro will probably forget we are there, and put us in the nicest hotel, so it's like we're going by ourselves!"

 

Dirk shot you one more confirming glance. You nodded.

 

The four of you scattered from your dominoes tourney to haphazardly pack for three days. John had enough of his clothes around your house to make that easy for him, but almost every shirt he packed was yours. You could never tell him you liked seeing him in your clothes. Already, you knew you were bisexual. Obviously the gay gene was strong in this family re: Dirk. Bro you had zero idea about. You had never seen him have a significant other ever in your life. He allegedly dated one of the Kartrashians five years ago. But here you were, Dave Strider, in love with a boy who was your best friend, only "out" to your older brothers.

 

After you got done packing, you and John were watching movies in the entertainment room when John started throwing popcorn at you. This of course began a war, which ended with you shoving fistfuls of popcorn down  ~~your~~  John's shirt. “Oh, it is  _on,_ ” he told you.

 

He got up and ran out of the room; you could hear his socks thumping until he was feasibly gone. Then you just sat there for a couple minutes. Waiting to hear his footsteps thumping back, but they never came. For a moment, you feared you’d made him so grossed out that he actually left.  _Maybe I touch him too much._ Even though he was just touching you all over on the balcony. Even though just said a few hours ago that he didn't want to go home.

 

You absently watched  _Men In Black_  and tried to shove your humiliation somewhere the sun don’t shine. Then, John was calling you on your iThrone mini.

 

“Dave's mortuary, you stab 'em, we slab 'em.”

 

“ _Come get me!”_

 

You stood up from the couch.

 

“What do you mean ‘come get you.’”

 

“ _I’m somewhere in this_ crazy _giant house that you could fit a whole immigrant caravan in if you wanted to -”_

 

“Whoa, holy shit, racist.”

 

“ _What? I am not being racist! You could give like twenty families and their babies a sweet luxurious shelter. It is a compliment! I didn’t even say what kind of immigrants they were!”_

 

“I don’t know dude, sounds pretty Third Reich.”

 

“ _Ugh. Stop stalling and come find me!”_

 

You paused. Your heart sure was beating.

 

“Are you really still in the house?”

 

“ _Er,_ duh,  _what did you think, I got so butt hurt that you got butter all over my chest that I ran back home?”_

 

You did not need the mental image of melted butter all over his chest. Wait, when did the butter get melted?

 

“Okay,” you said to the phone, strolling out of the room's doorway, “but if you’re in the - “

 

And he set up a prank for you in the hall: another one of his magic tricks, a spring loaded pulley that you triggered from the floor that dumped a massive bucket of pancake batter – _pancake batter –_ all over you and the carpet from the ceiling. You were completely engulfed, and when did he even have time to put that there?  _Pancake batter?_ He wasn’t allowed to hang out with Jake when you weren’t home anymore, nope, no more of this unfettered access to hallway closets and stowing his doomsday devices at every turn, dragging them out at capricious random to scare the shit out of you.

 

As you uselessly shook goop from your extremities, you could hear his stupid infectious laughter through the speaker of your phone on the floor.

 

“Egbert, I swear to fuck.”

 

He hung up the call, and as you contemplated the least bisexual way to enact revenge, you picked your shades off of your face, licking the cool batter around your lips. At least on top of making you look perpetually suave as hell, your trusted Universe shades just guarded your eyes from a sopping onslaught of raw egg...that you just licked.

 

John came bounding back up the staircase and into the hall before you, his glee so apparent, (you  _could not_ think he looked great when he was smug and pleased with himself) -

 

“Dude, you made that way too easy. How did you not see the pulley strings hanging from the ceiling? Both times?”

 

“How do you do this?” Okay, now that you thought it about, it was  _ridiculous_ that he’d somehow managed to affix his device to the ceiling – Bro’s fuckin’ million dollar pretentious ass ceiling – sometime  _before_ you started movies so your dumbass definitely should’ve seen strings on the way – so you laugh, because it’s ridiculous. “Did you wake up at like five a.m. and make all these goddamn pancakes?”

 

“Ew, it looks so gross now that it’s all over you.”

 

But John made the mistake of catching your eyes for too long.

 

“No,” he scolded you. “ _No._ ”

 

Fuck it: you reached a gooey hand for his arm and he yelped and laughed and tried to break free, but you pulled him viciously into you and strong-armed his back against your chest. He was squirming and giggling as you held his pinned arm to his back with one hand, wiped the batter from your other all over his face and torso, smearing it around and knocking off his glasses as he kicked back at one of your knees and you both collapsed.

 

He fell on top of you and you both  _plopped!_ into the batter pool, which was probably staining the hell out of the carpet  _and Bro will be pissed Egbert you’re a genius_ and he used your back against the floor to his advantage. Sat on your stomach and pinned both of your arms above your head with one hand by the wrists - he was stronger on top - and started slinging batter from the floor all over you with the other, burying you with it.

 

So much for the least bisexual way to enact revenge.

 

Squarewave was rolling down the hall at that moment, of course, and you both paused to observe, and be observed. Dirk surveyed you through its red eyes.

 

“Nope,” his synthesized voice came out of the robot’s speaker, “as a matter of fact, I don’t have any questions.” 

 

That Friday morning, Bro left the four of you in a presidential suite at the top of the Venetian, Vegas, Nevada. Jake’s duffle bag was half full of liquor he brought from the home bar, two fourths of Captain Morgan, a fifth of Everclear, and two thermoses of your family famous Jungle Juice. Starting at nine a.m., you all got drunk and stumbled into many of the major hotels on the strip, buying the tackiest tourist gear and feather boas and LED masks and seeing which one of you could pile on the most unreasonable decoration before the sun set. You won with a stacked combination that was so absurd, you couldn't see over all the shit you had wrapped around your neck, and John had to lead you through traffic.

 

When you got back the Venetian to drink in preparation for the night, Dirk revealed that he held in his possession a quasi legitimate version of Bro’s ID. “Filled out a lost or stolen with the DMV online six months ago. Darkweb guy changed the birthdate. He’s using his, I’m using mine.” He looked enough like the man himself did at 21 that it worked well enough for him to gamble in some overcrowded casinos. He was relatively able to keep Jake and his three days of stubble next to him at the slots, but you and John clearly looked under, so you had to find something else to get up to.

 

John was happy locating every single magic shop on the strip and demonstrating on the merchandise, until storekeepers gently threatened his removal. You just bought whatever he touched. When one of the cashiers was visibly suspicious that a thirteen year old was carrying $300 in cash to spend on swallowable swords, a mini metamorphosis box, and two gorilla suits, you made a joke that you were his sugar daddy. Overheard by two men nearby, window shopping near the shelves to the right of the register. They were both near forty by your guess, pimp looking dudes, hats, canes, the whole nine.  

 

Once you finished paying, John found something else he possibly wanted, so you were stuck still standing around when the men came to talk to you.

 

"What do you know about sugar daddies?" the man on the left ventured.

 

"That I'm not looking boys, sorry."

 

The man on the right laughed. "That's not what we're here for."

 

John was finally paying attention to these people who'd been staring at you but mostly him for a whole three minutes, his eyes wide because of their clothing and because he was a lightweight and you were a babysitter who was a midweight.

 

"Those canes are  _soooo_ cool."  John hiccuped. "Is that a snake head?  _Where_ in this desert can I buy one?"

 

"You want it?" The one on the left was handing it to him. 

 

You took it first. "This thing could be poisoned."

 

"Don't be jealous, he gave it to me, asshole. You're touching it right now, doesn't that make  _you_ poisoned?"

 

"That's how much I love you."

 

When John grabbed the base of the cane with the hand not struggling to hold his numerous shopping bags, you started walking with it to the doors of the shop and dragged him outside. Half of you thought the old dudes wouldn't be bold enough to follow you, but they were. You stood in the crowded intersection of the indoor mall and the men stopped beating around the bush. Told you that they could get you both in to the 18+ magicomedy show they were a part of tonight and tomorrow. Said that they heard your joke and thought you'd be interested.

 

John was 100% on board but you were 50% because they screamed  _pedophile_ at the 50% of common sense not currently blurred and inebriated. Bro was remiss on many things, but you remember word for word the conversations he had with you, Dirk and Jake when you were young about how to suss out adult predators. For all that he left you to roam the world on your own, he definitely trained you to survive it, and you do.

 

“Let me call my dad and ask,” you told the old guys. You stepped far enough away that you could still clearly see John and them as he showed off the swords you just bought him, but be out of earshot. Before you dialed, you noticed two soccer mom types watching John, mentally thanked their well earned suspicion.

 

“Are you broke yet?” you asked your brother when he picked up.

 

_"You and I will never be broke.”_

 

"So get this. These guys who might literally be pimps are trying to get us into their 18+ magic show for the free. Sorry, 'magicomedy.' Is that even a thing?"

 

_"Where are you?"_

 

"Mall in the Caesars. B2, across from the Cinnabon. John and I just bought swords and these ladies are staring, so we've got exit plans."

 

_"Jake and I are arriving shortly. How legitimate is this magicomedy show?"_

 

"No idea. Their outfits definitely scream like they make a living doin' somethin' tragic as that shit."

 

_"This is probably not the best idea I've ever had."_

 

"I'm already into it."

 

_"Last person who ID'd me was suspect. So our options tonight are buying more feather boas on the street and subjecting you and John to even more shameless kid thieves than these, throwing up if we skydive off of the Stratosphere, sitting in the hotel and getting drunk like we do at home, or we can use these guys to get drunk and do something mildly interesting."_

 

"I'm with the fourth."

 

_"I have a gun."_

 

"You  _what_ _?"_

 

_"I'm just saying, if it comes to that, with the pimps. I have a gun."_

 

"Slow your roll, Dirk Junior, it's not gonna come to that."

 

_"Aw."_

 

"Trust me, when you guys get here, their approach is gonna swerve to the left. They're basically twelve and unders, that's why they're focused on John. Jake and his beard and you and your passing resemblance to twenty are gonna make them nervous enough to let us steal all their gold but hold out in case they get lucky."

 

_"We're horrible people."_

 

"I love you too."

 

But you had a sick feeling in your stomach as soon as you hung up the phone. It wasn't the booze, but rather the fact that you were  _not_  drunk enough for this. You just admitted to your brother that you were watching your best friend talk to not one, but two potential pedophiles and you both completely turned it into a joke. Somewhere Bro Strider wasn't even watching over because he was never watching at all and maybe that's why this was funny. How far could you go and how far could you take it before he finally stopped doing this?

 

You walked back over to John and made behind-the-shades eye contact with the soccer moms, who were still eating their desserts and watching. Left Pimp was holding John's shopping bags for him and that made you angry. That was your shit you bought him.

 

"Heyyyy, are Dirk and Jake coming?" 

 

"They are." John came over to throw both arms around your shoulders. You didn't miss Pimps Left and Right exchange a little look. "Where is this show even at?" you asked them.

 

Right pulled his iThrone out of his purple slacks and showed you a digital flyer. It was at The New Orleans, had social media sites and looked legitimate enough, but you took the phone out of his hand to inspect it, click some URLs, cross reference Google, and he let you do all of it. Three hours of entertainment, and best yet, as well as it being magical it was a drag show too. You could fake it for this. Maybe you weren't gonna have to kill them for touching your boyfriend's merchandise.

 

Yikes. 

 

Dirk and Jake walked up just then. 

 

"Yvonne," Dirk said, introducing himself with a hand to the Left. "Tyler and Andrew's brother."

 

John snorted and buried his face in the side of your neck.  _He doesn't care about touching me._ He was  _so warm,_  and you wanted to throw your arm back around him in solidarity, but -

 

"Dick Cheney," Jake said, "friend of the family."

 

"So none of us are eighteen." Dirk was just launching into it wasn't he, it was almost worth it to you just to see how much he could make these guys suffer. "How exactly are we gonna get through to this? Don't tell me you'll have to sneak us in in a top hat. The fit might be a little tight."

 

John was losing it, you loved hearing him laugh like this. You snuck an arm around his waist.

 

"You're our kids," Right Pimp said, "coming to see us at work, works enough of the time."

 

"Tally ho then," Jake said. "Do you two have kids?"

 

God you needed to drink. You lightly kicked Dirk in the back of the knee for the thermos hidden in his backpack. He handed it over and you took four solid swigs. It was harsh, way harsher than it was a few hours ago. Who put Everclear in the Juice? It might've been you. Fucking well. That was going to be something.

 

When you handed it back to Dirk, you requested his ear.

 

"Did you bring the piece?"

 

Dirk sublty adjusted the lower hem of his tank top. You could see the bulk of a handgun down the front of his pants.

 

"Legal here?" you asked.

 

"Concealed, open carry. I'm also Dirk Strider, 21, NRA, registered."

 

Pimp whatever direction was saying to Jake that if this was happening, they needed to be there for sound check and you should come with them now. 

 

You followed the two men out of the mall and back into the wild of the strip. Now that you'd taken back John's bags and were heading back towards drunk, the flashing lights and the hot air and how many thousands of people swarmed and the fact that your three favorite people were right here with you started to make you feel excited and happy. John still hadn't let go of you, walking as physically close to you as he could, and you wanted to run away with him, do this with him forever. Eventually you prompted him to get on your back. He had his face pressed up against yours.

 

"What are we  _doing_ _?"_ he asked in your ear.

 

"Running away."

 

You had to wait an hour for the show to start because entertainment had to be early, but you did get to walk in through the backstage door with the Pimps nonchalant. There was no security at the coded back door this early since only performers were coming through now, though you figured there had to be some just outside the theater itself. You and your clan set yourselves in the the third row, first to be seated, and you felt a huge surge of relief that those two bozos were fucking gone now. When the show itself began, you were even more relieved because it was actually really cool and worth the trouble, some of the comedy sucked but most of the magic was crazy and you'd always been a drag fan. Dirk got chosen as the audience member to get sawed in half in a box.

 

Before he left for the stage, in the dark, you watched him pass the handgun to Jake. Jake stowed it in the same way.

 

The  _second_  the magician concealed Dirk in her illusion, next to you, John threw up on the floor under his seat. You and Jake exchanged a look of panic as audience members near you stared over in alarm. You curled over to check him with his head between his knees, make him look up at you with your hands on his face, he was conscious but barely sitting up without your help and you couldn't understand him, _fuck,_  what did you do? You'd been sitting right here and ten minutes ago or something he elbowed you during a joke, Dirk was still trapped but you couldn't just let John sit over his puke -

 

"Go," Jake said, motioning to the doors. "Washroom, water. You won't be able to get back in but as  _soon_ as the bloody fucking box lets him out in one piece we'll follow."

 

You gestured for John to get up with you; you were surprised he almost managed to stand by himself, but to walk you had to carry most of his weight on your shoulder.Before you left Jake tugged on the leg of your shorts, eyed his lap, _you take the gun._ You didn't know if you could do that or why, weren't you just going to the bathroom? But he opened the side pocket of your shorts and snapped it in himself,  _if we get separated, you're more important than I._ You nodded and understood and continued out of the aisle with John, through the exit doors.

 

You wandered around the crowded New Orleans casino lobby, John mumbling things to you and grappling with your shoulders. Now that you were really walking you knew you were  _way_  too drunk for any of this, the ground and walls and ceiling were spinning. You didn't think you would ever drink again. Hadn't you walked by a bathroom yet? You didn't even remember being in here when you got here - how did you get here exactly? 

 

It was the first time you'd ever blacked out. You came back to in what looked to be a men's bathroom somewhere, two stalls, two urinals and two sinks. You were looking at yourself in a mirror and one side of your shorts was really heavy. John was awake, but half lying on the tile floor, half slumped against the wall. Staring up at you, glasses crooked, pretty blue eyes, a hand held over his forehead.

 

"I don't remember," you started saying, "where are we?"

 

"New Orleans, I think."

 

You pulled out your phone to see Jake had called you 65 times.

 

"Well fuck," you said.

 

_"Dave, what the dadblasted cockamamie fuck?!"_

 

"Yeah okay I deserve that."

 

_"Where the hell are you and John?!"_

 

"A...bathroom, somewhere."

 

_"Somewhere?!"_

 

"We haven't been outside to check."

 

_"It's been a fucking hour!"_

 

"I think I. Possibly. Blacked out."

 

Dirk took the phone.

 

_"It happens to the best of us. John's with you, he's okay?"_

 

You looked over at John, who had his eyes closed and still held a hand over his forehead, but he was smiling to himself. Listening to your voices. Your heart did a strange jump.

 

"He's here."

 

_"Go outside, look around. It doesn't matter where you are. We'll find you."_

 

Sometimes, when you talked without seeing him, he sounded like Bro.

 

_"Wait for us there."_

 

You teared up as you tried to will yourself to the door.

 

"Why do you sound like him?"

 

He didn't answer.

 

"Where is he?"

 

You were now an emotional drunk.

 

_"We don't know where he is."_

 

John was standing now, unsteadily, but coming to face you in front of the sinks. His face was solemn.

 

"It's fucking bullshit," you said into the phone. "You literally left us at nine in the morning and it's fucking one it's almost been twenty four hours and not one of us has heard one single fucking word from you at all. I just black out walked through the city with my best friend and I had a  _gun_ and anyone could've seen us or found us or taken us away. You don't even care. Maybe I won't even tell you."

 

_"Dave. You know it's me, right? Not Bro. It's just me."_

 

"Yeah. Sorry." You wiped one of the tear streams from your face. John wiped the other away with his palm. "I am like a fucking sorority girl in this bitch, if you'll excuse me."

 

Dirk laughed, relieving his tension, near tears in his way.

 

_"Oh, man. Jake, you can unclench, they're gonna be alright."_

 

 

The presidential suite had a jacuzzi in the floor of one of the main rooms, set up in front of a large glass window overlooking the sparkling lights of the darkest dawn. You sat inside it, hungover, but better, and couldn't to wait forget the rest of what you just did. But at least John beside you was more mortified than you.

 

"Yep. The last thing I remember is Dirk making a joke about a top hat that made me laugh so hard, I stopped existing!" He was playing with the bubbles. "Oh, and you know what? Whatever happened to  _all_ that stuff we bought at those magic stores? I have  _no_  idea what happened to the bags."

 

"Last I know I was holdin' em on the strip on our way to the show. But honestly? The whole post Everclear Juice is kind of a blur."

 

John pouted. "How much did you even spend on that for me?"

 

You waved your hand.

 

"So much magic gone to waste." John drew a fake tear down his cheek. "But seriously, things could have been a lot worse. We walked really,  _really_ far. And I didn't even know you guys had a gun! But thank God for you, Dave."

 

"I wouldn't thank me, man. We still lost an hour."

 

"I wonder what we did?"

 

You glanced over at him, at his bliss willed by the warm water.

 

"Do you think - maybe we - " John let out a little sigh. "Like, um - kissed? In the bathroom?"

 

"...Uh."

 

There was definitely. Something. When you came back and saw yourself in the mirror. The way he was staring at you. The way he wiped your tears, and you let him.

 

"I don't remember that or anything, I think!" John scratched his head. "But I just - feel like maybe - that's how I was feeling, before. Before I started forgetting. That. I wanted a kiss."

 

Your inner bisexual was panicking.

 

"You _were_  drunk."

 

"I know. But it was like - it made me feel comfortable, to be close to you, like - like maybe I always wanted to, with you."

 

_Panicking._

 

"No, wait." John laughed. "Actually. The last thing I remember is asking you what we were doing. And you said. You said we were 'running away.'"

 

That was it. 

 

"John."

 

"What?"

 

"Kiss me right now."

 

Which was how Dirk and Jake walked in from getting breakfast to find the two of you kissing in the jacuzzi.

 

"Landsakes alive," Jake declared.

 

You both stopped abruptly, staring at them in silence, embarrassed.

 

But they looked at each other, smiled. Dirk said,

 

"Yeah, that's always made sense."

 

It would go on to make less sense to Dirk, and eventually Jake, as the years would follow. Even to John, and lastly to you. Try as you might to forget it, what happened in Vegas would not stay in Vegas. Except of course that missing hour, which still haunts you today. How did you live? Mental images of you and John at thirteen wandering streets of sin, clutching each other and terrified, or maybe you were brave. But that slip of mind was the root of everything that wouldn't make sense: how could you build a healthy relationship based on a moment you would never remember?

 

Bro wouldn't return to see you in the hotel until the third day, and no matter what you did, you couldn't forget your outburst to "him" in that bathroom. Finally getting it out, but not to his ears. You still weren't brave enough for that.

 

 

“The sense of his own beauty came on him like a revelation.”

 

 

When Karkat leaves you alone, for some reason, your first night in Vegas is bold in your memory. These days are not the anniversary, as that's usually when things come back to bother you. Maybe it's something about spending tonight with John at Bro's event. Maybe going out with John alone scares you. Maybe it will suddenly feel like that night all over again, your complete loss of control.

 

Regardless, the tickets are printed and rest beside the gram of coke on your desk. You even planned an outfit because you haven't worn a suit in a while and you can  _kill_ a suit. So maybe you should do tonight to overwrite your memory. Remember that John  _can_ be a normal friend to you, maybe, it doesn't have to be so loaded and emotional.

 

John calls you again at around nine. You hadn't answered the first time or the second. Right now it makes you anxious to clog the line with him, because you can't remember in your weird haze of memories whether you told Karkat you'd call him tonight or if you should be waiting for him to call. Regardless it feels like you've been staring at your phone for hours hoping he will call, anyway, about like. Literally anything.

 

But John.

 

“Dave Strider, world’s greatest psychic. Since I already know who you are and why you called, I'm hanging up now.”

 

_"Wow, that's a new one, I think!"_

 

"Nope. Been in rotation since 2012."

 

_"Damn. Well, you know my memory sucks."_

 

"Does it?"

 

_“Anyway, can I crash with you after we go to the thing? My Dad and Nanna are like...being my Dad and Nanna.”_

 

“Uh.”

 

 _“Ohhhh, unless_  Karkat _is gonna be there.”_

 

Okay. See this feeling you get when he does that is why it's not normal. The way he sing-songs your man’s name like you can't tell if he's making fun of you or Karkat or if he's trying to be playful and it's just coming off tone deaf. You're annoyed all of sudden and this thing. It keeps happening.

 

“He’s not, as of now.”

 

_“Awesome. It’s a date.”_

 

You didn't tell him he could stay.

 

He hangs up, so you're talking to yourself.

 

"Change of plans. Karkat is the move."

 

You call Karkat after twenty minutes of debating your thirst level, relieved when he picks up.

 

“What’s up, gorgeous?”

_“This is not a good time.”_

 

“...Oh. What’s going on?”

 

Karkat goes on tell you the security disaster his show has become for him: some guy who's been following the Quadrant since you blew it up has been  _stalking him_ for more than a month, _what the hell_ he never told you, not once when he came over during all of that time, why didn't he tell you? No wonder he's been stressed. He and his friends' computers have malware on them tonight, gift from the stalker. You're worried enough that _you_ could be stressed over it, but you have to be the comfort for him here.

 

“ _I don’t know if there’s anything I can do right this minute. He says if I try to look into what he did, he’ll ‘know,’ and he has my address. He sent me a screenshot of it. It could just be some dumb amateur script kiddie pissing around and trying to scare me without any follow through. I mean, he could be the second coming and I could be in actual danger, but you can find anyone’s address on LixusNixus and bypass the payment system if you’ve got half a brain and some SQL knowledge. Sollux can do it, and he’s not fucking Neo. But this guy found a way to get my medical records and social security and I don’t - I can't sleep knowing this guy has information on me like this._

 

 _“I’m just tired, Dave. Really fucking tired, today. I got into this stupid fight with Sollux earlier, Kankri's been taunting me all day, I just_ fought him  _in the hallway and he_ cried,  _and I trust Sollux to make sure that we’re actually good, but what if we aren't? What if someone shows up to my house? I can't, I can't do this."_  

 

You don't do well with proaction. Your concept of it has gotten you into even worse trouble historically. If you've learned anything from your past, it's that maybe sometimes you should wait, protect yourself from the storm instead of further walking into it, dwelling in downpour. If you've regretted anything, it's that you hardly reached out for help when you were in trouble. Legal help.

 

“Look, maybe the best thing isn’t a distraction, but if there’s nothing you can do right this minute about it all, maybe you could use a distraction. Let your friend Skrillex do his thing, look into the guy, figure how this all happened. Take a bubble bath, definitely turn your phone off, soon as you hang up with me. You got a flip phone?”

 

_“Yeah, I’ve got like six of my old Motorola T9 bricks from second grade dust-bathing in my desk drawer.”_

 

“Hop on one of those for a minute, and file a police report. You know I ain’t down with the five-o like that, but if some stranger’s tauntin’ you with your social and address, that sounds like somethin’ you should get ‘em involved in. Just to be on the safe side. Maybe this guy’s got nothing really. Maybe he lives in fucking Alaska and is just some loser sixteen year old who doesn’t like your show or whatever. Maybe it was just one laptop virus and now that you’re owned he’ll get bored and move on. Still, your peace of mind, that’s the important thing. You gotta get some sleep tonight.”

 

He's quiet, you can hear his bated breath. 

 

_"I'd sleep better if I was with you right now."_

 

Your heart is a storm.

 

"Are you sure that's what you want? Of course I wanna do anything I can."

 

_"Yeah. It is. Come get me."_

 

Move fucking secured.

 

When you bring him home, you know you're going to be with him tonight. You're canceling Bro, he's never going to give you anything like what you're building all on your own. Karkat looks drawn and wavering and tired, but he becomes stronger the more his hands take over your body. He dominates you, demonstrates his intentions in love no matter who tries to cover him in darkness, he's open and out and your body is a canvas for his proof. Finally, his sense of his own beauty comes on him like revelation; he knows you see him true, knows you are devoted, and knows what he could become. Tonight is the beginning.

 

After your moment, Karkat sits on your bed reclothed beside you. He talks to you about your previous plans for the evening, which you tell him don't have to be a thing now. His smile does fade when he looks over the Motorola phone for word from Sollux, but you can tell his mood is moreover peaceful. The hacker is backing down on him, letting him go, at least for now.

 

You forgot you hadn't told John your lover was the move, but when you see the cocaine beside the tickets on your desk, your memory comes back. When Karkat tells you he _wants_ to go with you to see Bro tonight - to support you in proving him wrong for real - you call John to drop him.

 

_"What's up?"_

 

"Yeah I'm just callin' to let you know that you've been cordially uninvited from tonight's festivities, a.k.a. Bro's thing."

 

_"What? Why?"_

 

"Bringin' Karkat along instead. After the day we've both had, we could use a little alone time."

 

_"Lame! Whatever."_

 

That...you're mad at him, that's what's going on. That he wouldn't be supportive of your relationship, not even after everything he's seen you go through. He didn't  _really_ support you through today, did he? He was there for you with the Bro of it, but not with the real deal. He always makes  _that_ about your game score, getting even, the _who can care least?_ competition and won't ever admit it. Bringing Terezi into it now, even.

 

You are cool on the surface, but deep down, you're done.

 

"See what Terezi's up to tonight, since you and her are such butt buddies lately."

 

_"Maybe I will!"_

 

"Love you baby," you lay it on, "please don't be mad."

 

_"Ugh, I hate it when you call me that."_

 

But he can call you 'babe' whenever he wants to, right?

 

"And that's why I do it. Peace."

 

 

When you get back to your empty palace with Karkat at one in the morning, you draw him a bubble bath; light incense, burning slow on your bathroom counter, take one more line of cocaine each of you. You were not supposed to do it again, but when Karkat walked into that dark curiosity, you had to follow him. You couldn't let him go into it without you behind him. He wouldn't be exposed to it if it weren't for you, just like Kankri and Cronus. But by time you are here in the bath with him, it feels less like a mistake and more like an allowance. You are only numb to your regrets over your past and your doubt that you will ever outrun them. He's blocked from his oncoming collapse and his stress, at least for now. 

 

He's naked and resting between your legs under the warm water, his back to your chest. He's talking quietly on his thoughts about your Bro, or at least the physical ones. How "impenetrably thick he cuts a figure." His hand is still sore, he says, from meeting him.

 

"What was so funny about that anyway?" 

 

You wrap your arms around him closer. "He's confusing. Never really cared about friends or lovers. He must've seen us together out there and like - _chose_ to introduce himself, _himself_. He doesn't do that. I think I'm dying. Hallucinations happen when you're dying."

 

Karkat slowly glides his hands over your forearms.

 

"You weren't serious about marrying me."

 

You chuckle, rest your head on his wet shoulder in confirmation.

 

"Dunno, maybe I was."

 

Karkat snorts. "Oh please, you wouldn't last a day being married to me."

 

"You don't think?"

 

"No! This personality is like the impressionist Monet and his paintings. From far away, it looks great, coherent even. But up close, it's wild strokes and mismatched color, a big fucking mess."

 

"That's from  _Clueless."_

 

"It's not. I invented that."

 

"Okay."

 

You start kissing his skin, slower and more even each time. He turns around and faces you, rutting over your lap with intention. Throws his head back when he hits the angle that does it for him, stealing your soul with his satisfied sound.

 

"God, you're so fucking perfect."

 

Karkat grins, breathless and gasping, biting the shell of your ear. In it, he whispers rasping:

 

"Don't say anything you wouldn't say tomorrow."

 

 

 "His beauty had been to him but a mask."

 

 

How you sleep for two hours is pretty unsettling, given how wired and irritated you usually feel when you come down from blow. When you wake up to the painful noise of Karkat hurling your alarm clock to the floor, it definitely feels like a mistake that you did this to yourself on a Tuesday morning. The drip in the back of your mouth is cloying. But Karkat looks to be done with the morning rage; he slides back into your side, staring at your skin like he's memorizing your freckles. You pull him closer and he rests his head on your chest.

 

You check your phone and Karkat doesn't mind; watches you scroll through your morning routine in your pixel world, check comments on SBHJ, quick look at your Twitter, the start of your Instagrub timeline. When you find John's photo from last night two minutes into your timeline - he and Terezi, her playfully licking his face - you don't realize how much it'll bother you. Until it does.

 

 **jeggyonthebeat:**  stop licking my face @G4LLOWSG4L!!! jk, i love it, and you. ♥♥♥

> **G4LLOWSG4L:**  YOUR3 D4MN R1GHT YOU DO >:P LOV3 YOU TOO N3RD ♥

 

It's so easy for her and it never was for you.

 

You miss both of them so much all of a sudden, you sink and it hits you. The months of watching them at school. What did you do? What have they been saying about you that's making her shut you out? Was it only the move on Karkat? Because you know Terezi knows you. She knows you wouldn't have done it just to hurt her, that there's so much more depth to him than that. John could be the corruption, maybe he's bitching about you lately and eating his words and regretting your love. Trying to take something back like he may perceive you took something from him when you finally moved on. Taking Terezi from you could be intentional. You don't want things to be like this.

 

You want as much of your old life back that you can salvage as much as you want to be with Karkat. It hurts that somehow you can't have both. 

 

"What?" Karkat prompts. 

 

You must be obvious. Being an open book is exhausting.

 

"I just." You bounce the phone in your hand a little. "Honestly feel like there should be some kinda bro code 'tween me and him about her. Like obviously I was just joking that he should hit up Terezi when I blew him off. But, yeah. Whatever."

 

Karkat lifts a brow.

 

"Do you really think that you're in any position to call 'bro code' right now? Given the fact that you're here with me right this second in a rather compromising position, doesn't that violate whatever 'bro code' you may've had with her?"

 

He's trying to understand it. He is. But you haven't told him the story, not even a little, so it's hard to expect him to.

 

You did try word vomiting your Vegas story to him once. Really poorly. You didn't know him well enough that night at your back to school party to get into how deep it went. For all that Karkat is very physically close to you right now, there's much he still doesn't know that intimately.  _Can_  you get that intimate with someone outside of it?

 

Maybe it's time to try and tell him.

 

"So Terezi hasn't said two words to me in over a month and I don't understand, I feel like she used to have no problem telling me if I did something wrong but now that she and John have been doing whatever - I get nothing. And John and I just kinda - have a really weird friendship. Our thing was always like this inane oneupmanship game of like 'haha how hard can I flirt with you without it being gay?' and it's been like that ever since we were young. Mostly it was me playing and waiting on John to catch up but like - then it got pretty gay as fuck for a few years which is a really long story. I don't even want it be like that though. I miss when I could tell him I loved him for being _my friend_ without it being some federal crisis. But now it's like.  _H_ _e's_  the one who keeps trying to make things into a game even though I'm done. Like now that I'm happy with you he goes and gets with her like to settle the score or something? To my fault I was fine with the dumb back and forth and being twisted loyal to him first for too long - at least - until now. 'Cause lately, with you - I don't know, it just gets on my nerves that he still thinks my thing for you is one of those things like when we took a break from hooking up sophomore year and dared each other to sleep with our other friends for sport - "

 

Karkat holds up a hand reflexive to stop you, which is - rude. Rude as fuck actually, but it's _Karkat_. Through much of what you just rambled, his eyes were glazed over, and then his expression was mildly disconcerted, but you kept talking and trying to brave judgement because you thought you could trust him with this. Given his hand, looks like he's judged.

 

“I'm sorry." He shuts his eyes. "'Hooking up?' You and him have  _slept together?”_

 

That's...all he got from that?

 

If that last sentence bothered him, why didn't he interrupt the start? At 'gay as fuck'?

 

....He wasn't actually listening to you. That. Might be a first.

 

"Yeah," you say slowly. "We have."

 

Karkat sits up from you abruptly. Frustration tugs at his face, his eyes are distant, there's distrust of you there.

 

“How many times? Was he ever your boyfriend?”

 

He really didn't listen.

 

"Yeah this so doesn't have a label - "

 

“How long has it been happening?”

 

That's fair, you weren't that specific. But is he going on the offense like this because he's - what, jealous? The only reason Karkat isn't your boyfriend is because  _he_ won't let you be.

 

“I don’t know," you say, "since we were like ten?”

 

_“Ten?”_

 

Kind of - that first moment when you were eleven, though it wasn't actual until thirteen - but how far a stretch from ten or eleven is thirteen considering what  _did_ happen when you were thirteen? 

 

You aren't sure if he's ready for your life.

 

“Nah ten is like you will never recover levels of young," you're deflecting, "what kind of feeble Oedipal deviant do you think I am?”

 

“I’d really appreciate it if you could drop the goddamn witticisms this once, Dave, just this fucking once, and just. Talk to me, seriously. Please.”

 

Fuck. This is what you've always been afraid of. That your life is too damaged and too crazy and you haven't even gotten into  _Bro_ and all the cliffs he's left you dangling from and what if he doesn't love you after hearing it? John may be the way he is but he was  _there_  you never have to explain to him and he held you through the inexplicable day of your not mother's funeral and - 

 

“John’s too close.” 

 

Karkat hesitates. “What does that even  _mean?”_

 

It means your life was what it was and you can't go back and they're your family.

 

“There are certain relationships that just don’t need fixing."

 

You'd try to explain better, but you don't know how to say the rest. Not on the remnants of cocaine for that matter, you should've _known_  you shouldn't do this anymore. Though Karkat looks like he's on the verge of crying, and  _fuck,_ why is this happening, why right now?

 

“So let me get this straight." His voice fluctuates. “Or whatever empirical, completely removed from context, metrosexual horse shit you’re going to want to call it. If we become what you consider romantic publicly I’m going to have to be potentially sandwiched between the whims of you and the dorkiest, hairiest straight-until-wet kid I’ve ever met in my life?”

 

“No, look." You're offended by 'hairiest straight-until-wet kid' because it's true but he doesn't have to knock how long it's taken you to move on from your first straight guy, you  _know._  "First of all, the hair wasn’t really that bad, kid gets a bad rap but I kinda got used to it after a couple swallows - ”

 

“Oh my God, I can’t do this with you.” 

 

Karkat is crying in full.

 

You're shaking. "What?"

 

“I can’t be the second choice - "  _but he isn't, he's the first and only -_ "I can't be the trade. I’m not like this, I can only handle falling in love with one person at a time, and this is - you knew, you  _knew_ that this was something you should've already told me about, that's why you're fucking so nonchalant and just  _casually_   telling me there's always been this other guy and you love him - "

 

It wasn't that you didn't want to tell him, it was that you couldn't, that your memories hurt  -

 

"I can't, I'm ending this right the fuck now. I can't. ”

 

He gets up, quickly rummaging for his sweater phone and jeans, literally running away from this -

 

“Karkat, wait, please, I didn't  - ”

 

He slams the door so hard behind him, it rattles the walls.

 

You stay in bed.

 

You sit there long enough that going to school doesn't look like it's happening. How you're going to look John in the face, watch Karkat ignore you again and all that progress from yesterday gone, deal with Terezi - you don't feel up to it, not even a little. Your phone screen is still on their photo in the blankets but you don't have the energy enough to change it. Fifteen minutes before homeroom and you're still in the same place. Maybe you always were.

 

When you finally feel like you need to pee to the extent that you _have_ to get up, you relieve yourself in the bathroom, find the evidence of last night: the burnt out incense holder, the faint rings of soap in the bathtub, the towel he used that you just know will smell like his skin. You can't clean up or look at it or process so you wash your hands as quickly as possible and leave it.

 

Before you climb back into bed, you notice your phone screen is navigating on its own.  _What the fuck._ You hover over the side of the bed and watch as  _something_ swipes your screen to the right twice, locating the Quadrant app and opening it. _No really what the fuck._ Navigates to the main menu with icons that are those spinning pool balls you noticed they had on there once, that they put up for a night and got rid of the next. Shows you the black audio player that usually loads right before a live episode. He's recording now? About what? About you? 

 

You pick up the phone, your heart racing, stand and wait for the player to go.

 

 _"Ladies, gentlemen and all in between,"_ Karkat's voice speaks,  _"welcome to the final broadcast of The Quadrant. The following is my suicide note."_

 

You drop the phone to the floor.

 

_"I have wasted your time significantly enough with the pitiful tirade that is this show, and have decided that my quest for love and happiness is futile. Why, you may be asking? Aside from the fact that I'm wildly unsuccessful in all my endeavors, romantic and otherwise, I've never really understood what the point of being alive is. As you all know I don't believe in God anymore, so I know I'm not here for some meaningful spiritual purpose, and my waking hours are spent hating myself so thoroughly that it'd be nice to have some peace and fucking quiet for a change._

 

_"What is even the point of existence? If you ask me, it's stumbling from one embarrassing moment to the next and asking questions that have no answers to people who only care about themselves, until eventually you grow senile and die slowly. Why wait around for that? Don't bother trying to talk me out of it. This is something I've wanted for a long time and honestly the world will be better off without me. I'm nothing but a sadsack pretentious teenager who talked down to people on here to attempt to deflect my own unrelenting loneliness._

 

 _"To_   _everyone who ever tuned in to this massive trainwreck where I babbled on like I even knew what the fuck I was talking about, thank the giant void in the sky where my idea of God used to live that you're finally going to be rid of me._

 

_"And to everyone who thinks true love exists, I'm sorry, but it doesn't. I lied. I am the biggest fucking liar. It is me. Was me. Sincerely, Karkat Vantas, a.k.a. KK. Goodbye."_

 

"No, no, no - "

 

You scramble for the phone, call him once, and he doesn't pick up.

 

"Fuck, Karkat, come on, please - "

 

 **DAVE:** i know youre really fucking pissed about this morning and i deserve that but please let me know that youre okay

 

When he doesn't respond for two minutes, you call again to no answer.

 

You can't keep getting negative confirmation like this, you just can't. It can't possibly be true, you can't have that thought.

 

What may be an hour later, you have done four more lines of blow, but don't completely feel no sting. You're in the parlor, your laptop and phone spread out on the green table, but you're on the couch with them over there now. Quadrant got hit with a virus and so did you, as a - now you guess - former frequent lover. Whoever is running the backdoor to your computer, they created a Notepad with lines about you: DAVID STRIDER. NO MIDDLE NAME. AGE 17. DECEMBER 3. 1999. BORN TO. DIRK STRIDER SR. YVONNE BARR II. 1700 VELLANO ESTATES DR. #12. VALLEY. CA 91709. 909-555-9090. GAY. BI. TOP. BOTTOM. WHO KNOWS.

 

Bro comes home and walks into the parlor as you're head in the cushions, on your back, feet dangling over the edge.

 

He stands over you, turns his head to observe you.

 

"You're high."

 

You stare at his mostly upside down face. "Yeah."

 

"On what?"

 

"Coke."

 

He takes off his shades.

 

"Why?"

 

"I think my boyfriend might be dead."

 

He flinches.

 

"How sure are you of that?"

 

"I don't know. My phone is over there and he hadn't answered my calls. So."

 

He moves to grab your phone from the table, stands back over you. Hands it in your direction. You hesitate to take it.

 

He touches the screen himself, reads the front. "Karkat, right?"

 

You sit up violently and take the phone from him, see the beginnings of his response in the notifications.

 

 **KARKAT:** THAT WASN'T ME. 

 **KARKAT:**  UNFORTUNATELY, I'M STILL HERE!

 

You hurry to unlock it and find the rest.

 

 **KARKAT:** THAT GUY WHO'S BEEN STALKING ME POSTED A FAKE BROADCAST.

 **KARKAT:** PLEASE LEAVE ME ALONE.

 

That's all of it. You let the phone drop to your side on the couch cushion. Lean forward, elbows to your knees, bury your face in your hands.

 

"He's not dead," you say to Bro, muffled through your palms. "But he told me leave him alone."

 

Silence passes for longer than is comfortable. You know he's still standing above you because you can feel the weight of him, his body heat, that mindfucking silent pressure that lets you know his eyes are on you. Shit. What does he want from you?

 

When you look up, Bro is pinched eyebrows and vulnerable stiffness. 

 

"I feel like I'm out of my depth," he declares. "Like I shouldn't be, but I've left you here, and you're this person with this life that I don't recognize, and should've known, but never did. I'm fucking disgusted, honestly. With me, not with you."

 

You are sick to your stomach, with his honesty.

 

"What do you need me to do?"

 

Wow. That is  _the_  loaded question if you've ever heard it. Has he ever asked what you've needed before? Ever? What could he do, that isn't going back and doing over eighteen years of your life?

 

But this isn't what he means: it's shallower than that, it's present. Fuck whatever you can't get back, he's standing here and he's not leaving and he's trying, at least right now. Use him.

 

"I need you to find the person who's fucking with him."

 

He processes that, silently gauging you and his options.

 

"'kay. I'm not really a hit man - anymore - but I think I can do that. For you. What are we talking here?"

 

You stand up and retrieve your laptop from the table, bringing it to the couch. He sits down next to you, watches you navigate your infected OS riddled with pop ups, the browser window with Quadrant in it. His skin smells really distinct, like natural and like eighteen years and like sleeping in his bed when he wasn't there and you were still little. It's comforting, whether he deserves it to be or not.

 

"This - fucking bullshit." You maximize the window, showing him the blinking timer at 00:00 in the banner, the player that launched the broadcast. "Some guy, they don't know who or where or how he's even doing all of this, but he took over their site, sent people like me who've been on it some kind of virus." You open the Notepad with his "doxx" of your information. "Gave this to me, like vaguely threatening to do something with it or something. He has way more than this on Karkat, his medical records, his social. Force played this recording of Karkat's voice, or a version of it computerized, on here and on the app that I have on my phone. Saying that he was gonna kill himself. Before that he was somehow tracking every mobile device Karkat bought and texting and calling from random numbers. It's fucking bullshit chaos, he didn't do anything to deserve this. His friend Sollux who's a hacker has been trying to find this piece of work for weeks but he can't get a hit."

 

It felt really good to get it all out. Bro glances up from the screen to you.

 

"What would you like me to do with this piece of work, when I find him?"

 

_I'm not really a hit man - anymore._

 

You really look at him, deep into his eyes for the first time in years, sit there and just. Think about that for minute. You're pretty sure you know what he's saying he'll do for you, but it's a lot. That now something like this is coming, after all this time. In the scarce fucking shambles of his defense, you don't ever ask him for help. It's implied that you need it because he's the parent, but Striders are notoriously dodgy with implications.

 

...Dirk had that talk with you six years ago, but you've never been sure. 

 

"You were a hit man?"

 

"Kind of."

 

Sure enough.

 

You are aware it wouldn't be an eye for an eye, because Karkat didn't die. But that's what he was intending to do. Right? Why else would you do that to someone? KK may be gone to a lot of people, and someone who would do that to someone doesn't have a life.

 

"If - if you can get away with it and still keep everything you have. Do it."

 

Bro nods. "Mind if I take your computer?"

 

You hand it over. He gives the screen a closer cursory glance, then shuts it over his lap. Turns to permit you his eyes one last time.

 

"Give me the rest of the coke."

 

You flush. "It's upstairs."

 

His serious look doesn't falter. "I'll wait."

 

When you return down the staircase, Bro is waiting before the doors of the foyer, his shades reinstated, your laptop under one arm and a black rolling suitcase beside him. He holds open a hand for the bag, you place it in his warm palm. Then he silently walks away from you and goes, locking his mansion behind him.

 

You have no idea what he's going to do.

 

 

\-- mercurialEmpress [ME] started pestering turntechGodhead [TG] at 10:21:42 -- 

ME: dave idk where you at yo but karkats shit fuckin exploded this mornin if it didnt go off on your phone like it did 100 other ppls fuck  
ME: rezi talked to his girl kanaya and they sayin hes okay hes safe at home and that it was fake somehow but  
ME: i know it aint you whos probly goin thru a world of pain i cant even take rn but are you good?  
TG: i wouldnt say good  
TG: not coming to school  
ME: dont blame you i dont even wanna be here everythins dark and everyones quiet i kinda just wanna go home and not think  
TG: you should do that then  
ME: yeah  
ME: maybe i will  
ME: kankri probly aint lastin much longer listenin to ppl talk about it and cronus is bein a fuckin dumbass to him so ill probly take kankri home and just fuckin dip before this assembly they makin us go to  
ME: lmk if you need shit bro this kinda shit makes you remember how quick it can happen  
TG: thank you  
ME: love you  
TG: love you too

 

You sit and stare out of the window at the pool, the ripples of the water reflecting grey fog. Dirk calls when you think about going swimming.

 

"Hey."

 

_"Dude, Bro is fucking pissed. Whatever mission you just sent him on, he dropped everything and is going full revenge. You know those phone phreaks from DEF CON he broke shit with in his twenties? Two guys from 'back in his day'? Just grouped us all in an encrypted chat. Sounds like we've got a challenge, but Bro thinks we can do it."_

 

He's actually doing it.

 

"...I don't know what to say."

 

_"No need. I'm sorry this happened to him, and to you. But the fucker behind it's already dead, far as we're concerned. You know. Probably."_

 

 


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> TW, Dirk's discussion on Caliborn mentions violent homophobia (fourth pesterlog with Dave).

 

 

 “An idea that is not dangerous is unworthy of being called an idea at all.”

 

 

You finally sleep, for the first real time in two days, as the sun is setting over your pool. When you wake up outside in a lounge chair around midnight, it hits you.

 

“I told Bro to  _kill a man."_

 

\-- turntechGodhead [TG] started pestering timaeusTestified [TT] at 23:57:28 --

TG: bro  
TT: Brother.  
TG: youre not actually gonna kill him  
TG: right  
TT: Wouldn’t be me. Did you not want him to?  
TG: i  
TG: no  
TG: dont think so  
TG: wait no  
TG: no death  
TG: just punishment  
TT: Okay.  
TT: I’ll let him know.

 

  
Getting out of bed is hard, that first morning. It goes on to be a challenge every morning, the following weeks of November. You know he won't be at school. You know he's gone dark, no phone and no way to be reached out to, for good reason. As much as you want to call and reach out, tell him that monster won't win, you have to respect that he wants to heal alone. 

 

You just can't stop thinking about him. What that voice said: " _I k_ _now I'm not here for some meaningful spiritual purpose."  "My waking hours are spent hating myself so thoroughly that it'd be nice to have some peace and fucking quiet for a change."  "This is something I've wanted for a long time and honestly the world will be better off without me."  "To everyone who thinks true love exists, I'm sorry, but it doesn't."_

 

Was that how he felt? During the lowest of this depression he's been fighting for years? It felt so real to you, like you could hear both his pain and his release. Like it was  _your_ Karkat, the way he sounded when he'd written painful words so many times before and finally got them out. How did a hacker who didn't know him get inside his head - the way he posed his thoughts, his every breath and every pause - so deep and so thorough that it could've been him? How did _Karkat_ listen to it - if you felt destroyed by his virtual departure, and still do, you can't even imagine what he's going through right now. To sit there and to know that from now on, when some people hear his name, that is always what they'll hear. How he'll be remembered.

 

You sit in your bed some mornings and feel this phantom of him around you. You can almost get up and start another day, because for a moment, in the depths of your dreaming rest, you'd forgotten. But his reality comes down on you heavy with the sun. You mourn for his last moments here in your bed, just like you did that last day because you were _so close._  He is gone so suddenly, over and over, you can still hear his whispers behind you, feel him slipping through your fingers like sand. Like Karkat is always going to be _just_ there, barely, almost. You aren't sure when or if he's coming back to school, and if he doesn't? You wouldn't blame him. But how will you forget him?

 

John is trying right now. He is. You spend most of your school day next to him still, because sitting next to each other without question is just what you always both do. You are too exhausted to not be numb to his stubborn friendly. But you two don't talk about what's really going on. Will you ever? The fact that you're being awkward and dodgy with him because he was essentially the cause of your argument with Karkat. It wasn't his fault, not directly. He didn't know that you had developed such a complex over him once, even talking about your past with it drove a current wedge right into your relationship. He didn't know, right? Maybe he should know finally, but you can't tell him now, not when you've already lost something. He tries to make normal conversation with you, throw it out there that you should hang out outside campus, but you aren't up to that.

 

A week into Bro and Dirk's mission to track down "uu," Dirk contacts you saying that they could use whatever information Sollux may have gathered. "i dont really know him hes karkats friend not mine" you tell him, but Dirk encourages you to feel up to it. "Maybe he'll work with us because it's for Karkat. If not, we can find what we need without him. Just thought we might try pooling information."

 

Karkat communes with his Quadrant friends on Pesterchum. You remember seeing on his phone that Nepeta was arsenicCatnip on Quadrant's network same as she was on PC. twinArmaggedons might have a similar thing going on.

 

\-- turntechGodhead [TG] started pestering twinArmaggedons [TA] at 16:46:09 --

TG: hey is this sollux  
TA: who2 thii2  
TG: dave  
TA: ......a2 iin 2triider  
TG: yeah  
TA: what do you want  
TG: my brothers going after the person who hacked you  
TG: if you could send me the info you have on him so far ill get it to him and he says itll help

 

He doesn't respond for so long, you think he's going to ignore you. Then:

 

TA: none of thii2 wouldve happened two hiim iif iit hadnt been for you

 

You should've known this guy wouldn't be gentle.

  
TG: i know  
TA: 2o dont you thiink youve done enough?  
TA: what do you even want from hiim?

 

You know that's fair of him to say. To him, you're just some guy who opened up the cesspool of Internet traffic that brought him, his hard built project, and one of his best friends their worst nightmare. But to be fair to yourself, you don't want anything from Karkat. You can't. He doesn't owe you.

  
TG: i dont  
TG: its not fair to want anything from him now  
TG: what i wanted before isnt even why im doing this  
TG: im just trying to do right right my part however i can  
TG: all i can do really  
TG: i didnt really want from him honestly i  
TG: from the start i wanted to give  
TG: anything i could to him  
TG: hes the best person ive ever gotten to be close with  
TG: i just wanna make sure hes safe and this guy can never hurt him again  
TA: okay iif ii 2end you thii2 wiill you 2top waxiing thii2 2appy romantiic whiite 2aviior garbage iintwo my pe2terchum?  
TG: yeah sorry  
twinArmaggedons attached files hle.zip, uu.dat, uu.kali  
twinArmaggedons attached files q4-3.apk, q4-3.ipa, quadrant2ux55.bat, quadranthome11-1QUARANTIINE.zip  
TG: thank you  
TA: good luck

\-- twinArmaggedons [TA] has blocked turntechGodhead [TG] --

 

You are...weirdly comforted by the block. By the whole affront, really, even though it was aggressive. That Sollux is really as blunt, impersonal, but full of stubborn love for Karkat as he was on the show you loved. 

 

You miss them too, hearing their voices laugh along his, though you don't know if you deserve to feel that. You were the inadvertent first oblivious domino that would cause their row to fall.

 

TG: i dont think i know what all this is but im assumin you will  
turntechGodhead attached files q4-3.apk, q4-3.ipa, quadrant2ux55.bat, quadranthome11-1QUARANTIINE.zip  
turntechGodhead attached files hle.zip, uu.dat, uu.kali  
TT: I should.  
TT: Tell him I said thank you.  
TG: he blocked me after he sent that  
TT: Oh.  
TG: so i guess this means you havent found the guy yet  
TT: Not really.  
TT: We're getting close.  
TT: Bro's developed a strong lead via the malware from your laptop, via darkweb, via some illegal shenanigans.  
TG: how illegal are these shenanigans  
TT: The FBI may or may not have been breached.  
TG: what  
TT: They had information they were just sitting on. Bro needed it. Two and two.  
TG: how the fuck is that even possible  
TG: for him to just DO that  
TG: theyre the fbgoddamni  
TT: Honestly, I don't know how he did that.  
TT: These two guys he "knows" are definitely up to some very dubious shit. One of them is "dead" at the moment. Faked his own death fifteen years ago, to do heaven knows what to whom in the government.  
TT: If you know everything, as Bro plus two just might, you can always hack everything, hypothetically.  
TT: Even, apparently, the FBgoddamnI.  
TG: and these guys wanna help ME with my lame high school bullshit???  
TT: This is very much not lame high school bullshit. Your guy is up to much worse than he levied around you.  
TT: Personally, I don't feel comfortable knowing he's just out there getting away with it. Not even Bro, the former killer for hire, and his ilk are comfortable with this.  
TT: But what you just sent us, legally, will hopefully help us fill the remaining gaps in his identity.  
TT: Unless Sollux wasn't beyond using illegal shenanigans.  
TG: just dont get thrown into prison okay i couldnt handle that  
TT: Hey, my hands are clean over here. I'm in the middle of a snowstorm in Massachusetts. I'm just the errand boy, the occasional encryption prodigy, and the messenger.   
TT: Anyway.  
TT: How is Karkat?  
TG: dont really know  
TG: he doesnt want me to talk to him about it yet  
TG: maybe not ever  
TT: Sorry about that.  
TG: its  
TG: not okay i was gonna say okay but  
TG: it is what it is  
TG: hes alive and i  
TG: yeah  
TT: Okay.  
TT: On a lighter note. Have you thought about what you wanted to do for your birthday?  
TT: It's the big eighteen.  
TT: I know we were throwing ideas around about Cabo. That house you wanted is still available, if you wanted me to book it.  
TG: youre coming home?  
TT: Of course. Jake will be right behind me, obviously.  
TG: gross  
TG: but yeah i guess cabo is cool  
TG: havent thought about my bday at all tbh  
TT: I guess I don't blame you.  
TT: You deserve to have some fun.  
TG: do i though  
TT: Yes. You do.

 

Some days at school, things start to feel weirdly normal. Meenah and company distract you the way they used to. You find yourself laughing and competing during the food fight Tavros and Gamzee start that wreaks havoc through an entire lunch period. Meenah and Kankri have been in one of their closer positive upswings lately, which makes you feel like it's junior year and everything is less complicated. You're barely even bothered watching Terezi and Vriska gossip three seats down from you, like maybe this is just what happens in high school, you lose people and let it go.

 

But some days, you look across the quad and catch sight of Rose and Kanaya sitting alone at their L-shaped table, hole in the shape of Karkat beside them. Some days you see Terezi sitting there with them, low voices and holding hands. Karkat should be there. If you hadn't watched him in that same spot months ago, if you hadn't brought him your attention and your online onslaught, would that hacker have been able to find him and do this to him? Not just to him. To those who have been there for him long before you.

 

In the back of Spanish 1, two weeks after the broadcast, you turn around to look at Rose during vocal deskmate exercises. You wonder how she's going through it. How much worse of a horror it must've been for her and Kanaya, at that moment. Whether her cool indifference and ever slight smile is a front, a lot like yours is.

 

She doesn't let you look at her long though. Her violet eyes connect with yours.

 

“There’s something you’d like to say."

 

Now that you think about it.

 

“I’m sorry.”

 

Rose tilts her head. “What for?”

 

“You know his show got out of control because of me. We can't prove it but let's be real here the timing points to me. I never should’ve looked into it and never should’ve brought him into my voyeuristic open wound of an online whatever, you and Kanaya and his Quadrant friends and his family, I made all this trouble for and for fucking what?"

 

You didn't know that was what you needed to blurt out, but you're here. “Is he okay?” 

 

Rose's gaze softens significantly. “Would you be?”

 

No. Neither would she, given the way her front dissolved. Fuck. If he really was doing okay she would've laid it on. Told you he was good, never better,  _no_ _w that he's not with you,_ becausedidn't she say she would kill you if you ever hurt him? Didn't you just?

 

“I can’t even - I have no right to be feeling any type of way about this, like if this is really some shit I brought him I should basically just fuck off and act like he doesn’t know me at all and never did. Right? But how do you just _stop caring_ about someone like him?”

 

Rose taps her pencil eraser to her chin.

 

“You love him.”

 

 _I don't know you that well,_  she said once, _and even I can tell you're an open book._

 

"Yeah." Tears prick at your eyes. "I do.”

 

“So it was supposed to go the way high school romance goes. What you did when you ‘trolled him’ was immature and baseless, sure, but rather light compared to the gauntlet of emotional torture teenagers regularly brandish over each other. And he forgave you. Punished you a little by not allowing you the pride of his public affection. But he has needed someone to look at him and not stop looking at him, to not allow what he perceives as flaws worthy of abandonment to intimidate the state of loving him. You are not that important, Dave Strider. The actual events that would lead to that morning and his relationship with you are inversely proportional.”

 

You never thought the words _you are not important_ would make you feel so relieved, but it’s more comforting to hear than you knew you needed. Being famous, the pressure you put on yourself to perform up to this untouchable ideal, all those people watching you, it makes you feel like every one of your moves could accidentally bring your whole world down. It's always done this, made you overanxious and overaware of yourself, knowing that you can never really erase what past you lived like. But you don't have to do this anymore, it could stop today, because you're not that important you're just a guy and you could go online right now and delete every window into your life the world has of you.

 

...Her other words _inversely proportional_ are settling with you less. That's a thing you've heard, one of those problems in Algebra you've skipped over time and again. It makes you feel a little stupid for not knowing it. But maybe you should feel a little like that, at this point. 

 

“...I’m not a math person so your last one's goin' over my head."

 

When she smiles a touch, you find yourself mirroring her somehow.

 

Rose turns her notebook at an angle so you can see, and [draws four lines](https://www.desmos.com/calculator/qqpzoegndk): horizontal x axis, vertical y axis, and two curves in opposing quadrants.

 

“These parabolas never intersect each other." She hovers her pencil over the curves heading in different directions. Drifts her pencil to the empty space between the axises. “They don’t have the same origin. They will never cross over either axis. If we were to extend this graph of y equals 1 over x so that we could view how far it travels up to infinity, it might seem like the curves were getting _very_ close to overlaying their borders, but it’s impossible. So let’s say the bottom half of the graph of is hatred and the top half is love. You and Karkat are above the x, and that monster is below it.” She points to the curve above. “And like I said, the further you follow your curve's distance, through its infinite lifetime, the further it will get from ever crossing the other’s path again.”

 

You understood that somehow. Most of it.  _You and Karkat are above the x,_  Rose sounds certain.Fuck, you miss him so much.You would do it all again, the hard of it, the heavy of it, but you aren't moving forward with Karkat. He's moving backwards and you're moving backwards in opposite directions and what if he's done?

 

“But how is it." Your voice breaks. "How is it not my fault?"

 

“Because you didn’t expose his show as an act of hatred. Did you?”

 

“No. It was just - some dumb jealousy maybe, that he was so secure and honest and I couldn’t be like that. But mostly I did it because that day I first heard him, I knew I was never gonna forget his voice, and I wanted - I wanted _him,_ to be like him and be in his life and - I should’ve just said that as soon as I felt it.”

 

Rose nods. “He knows you love him.”

 

You sniffle. “Does he?”

 

“You know if anyone is in tune with love, it’s Karkat. Just give him some time.”

 

But it's easier said and illustrated than done.

 

Karkat shows up to campus at the end of that school day. You are walking by the administrators' office when you see him in the open door, dropping off or collecting homework. He won't look up at you - accidentally makes eye contact for a split second - and continues talking with the person behind the desk. You are relieved to find him whole, strong enough to face the humiliation of that morning that you sure as fuck wouldn't return to, if it were you. But you hate that this is how it is now, you do. Was it really just John that made him run away from you? Had that hacker not done that explosive move, wasn't he still going to avoid you? Not that your thing with John isn't - you really do need to address that. But you would take Karkat over your weary to you best friend infinity times over. If Karkat gave you that ultimatum, you'd do it.

 

You find Meenah and Kankri hanging around not far from the administrators' office, stop to talk. Maybe it's an excuse. Maybe he'll see you when he comes outside.

 

"'Sup babe." Meenah gives you a quick handshake. "Your boy's back to school tomorrow, you heard?" 

 

"Yeah," you say, because that's all you can say. 

 

"I really don't think he should." Kankri is staring beyond you two at the office. "But he wouldn't listen to me if I tried to convince him. It's too soon."

 

"Too fuckin' soon how?" Meenah flicks his shoulder playfully. "You know he's not gonna let those grades slip, don't he got straight A's, even this whole semester? He's a fuckin' workaholic."

 

"He wouldn't leave the house," Kankri points out. "This is the first time he's gone out in two weeks. People will not be kind. The virus is still giving families trouble. Half of the people here think he _did_ post the note. Some kind of cry for attention. People will not be unkind, they will be cruel."

 

You have never heard Kankri talk about Karkat like this before. _Protective._ In his way. Your heart is doing things.

 

"We got what, three more weeks left a this bull?" Meenah says. "Put his head down, work on the work, he can do it. Rose and Kan ain't gonna let no bitches talk to him wild, they both the whole Karkat force field."

 

Cronus comes walking in your direction. Kind of. He mostly ignores you three, strolling on by, but he does whistle -  _whistle -_ at Kankri. Like a dog.

 

"Yo, you ready to go now or what?"

 

Kankri crosses his arms closer around himself, rolls his eyes. Cronus keeps walking towards the gates to the parking lot, props himself up against one. Meenah looks at Kankri deadpan. You feel rather invisible.

 

"I told him I'd give him a ride," Kankri mutters. "His car is in a bad way, of course, again."

 

"Didn't you _just_ bring Karkat here?" Meenah's exasperated. "Wow, so much for carin' if people is cruel, you about to ditch his ass on campus not even ten minutes in and he ain't even back for real yet! Tell that blowfish to go suck himself."

 

"Why don't you?"

 

"Ay, Cronus!" Meenah is loud enough that everyone can hear her, including Cronus, who's looking at his phone. "Go suck yourself, bitch!"

 

Cronus throws her the finger. Kankri is already digging his car keys out of his pocket.

 

"You don't mind, do you?" Kankri tells Meenah. "He won't mind, just - tell him I had to go and that - I'm sorry."

 

"I fuckin' guess?"

 

You watch Kankri until he's stopped before Cronus at the gate. When Cronus - looking bored - does this little chin tilt move to Kankri's face with a finger, like that pretty face is _his,_ you suddenly hate Cronus more than you hate anyone, and that's saying something.

 

"I oughta stab my own cousin in the neck," Meenah says to you casually. Cronus and Kankri leave together behind her. "You're quiet today. You a'ight?"

 

You wish you could answer that honestly. But you got close to crying in sixth period, so you're still feeling pretty raw. Not looking for a repeat this exact moment. You could probably go at any minute, given the conversation you just made yourself watch.

 

"I'm like - existing," you give her.

 

Meenah raises a pierced eyebrow. "You and the better Vantas not talkin' through this whole thing, huh."

 

You shrug.

 

"They're both gonna kill me," Meenah laments.

 

Karkat comes out of the office door and steps over to Kanaya, who's waiting under the awning for him. Had she been standing there this whole time? He hugs her close, and like that they stay. Kanaya is talking to him, supportive wisdoms in his ear.

 

"I'm gonna go," you say. 

 

Meenah gives you a sympathetic look, fishing her car keys out of her bra.

 

"This shit'll get better, bro, it's gotta. The other one might be too long gone for fuckin' help, but yours got hope. I'm makin' sure of it today anyway."

 

Later on that night, Dirk gets in touch with you on the mission. Explains that he and Bro have encrypted IRC channels set up to contact the hacker directly. You don't know why or how they can talk to him (casually?) while still not knowing his name or location and while apparently hating his guts. But Dirk is doing that now, he says, as the two of you talk on Pesterchum.

 

TT: He enjoys the game he's playing. Readily welcomes potential adversaries to get as close to him as they can without getting burned, because he doesn't believe he'll lose. Mostly taunts us in our channels, but the more he says, the more we recognize him.

 

Dirk says that you can contact him, if you want. The IRC server he created tonight is secure enough that you could enter from your desktop, with caution, and say your peace. "why the fresh fuck would i wanna do that" you ask him. Dirk says, "Closure."

 

_"The following is my suicide note. I have wasted your time significantly enough with the pitiful tirade that is this show, and have decided that my quest for love and happiness is futile."_

 

Not this again. You can't, you won't, remember Karkat like this. This guy can't get away with that. It has to be closed. 

 

You consider how much closure you've gotten on most things in your life. You're coming up pretty short. Even now that Bro is silently orchestrating this revenge scheme that you can't even believe is real, you still don't know that he's doing it because he loves you. If you asked him now, would he tell you he does? Did he really think offering to kill someone who messed with Karkat would make up for the neglect? That that'd make you, what, happy? Make you feel loved?

 

_"What is even the point of existence? If you ask me, it's stumbling from one embarrassing moment to the next and asking questions that have no answers to people who only care about themselves, until eventually you grow senile and die slowly. Why wait around for that?"_

 

No. _No._

 

Karkat knows you love him. What Rose said to you has been pulling at your heartstrings since you got home. It wasn't him who said those things, you keep holding onto it like it was, but you know _him_. He will move forward, become who you saw he'd be in the future, that last night you were together. His voice will prove him, he'll be back on the radio with a vengeance, overwriting the sorrow of his false departure. He doesn't have to wait for those things to come to him. Once he knows himself again, once he's prepared and healed, that success will throw itself at himself like a lover reunited. If you can't be beside him to see it, so be it. Knowing he'll do it is enough.

 

But this dangerous person can't be within reach of someone you love that much. He could still interrupt him, and this feeling can't stay in your heart. This fear that you will only be taken from because you give and you give. This guy was trying to make an example of people like you, of people like Karkat. If you don't want your heart to keep breaking over and over, you have to embrace that when you love, you love hard. It's not weakness. It's what makes you strong.

 

You have to start standing up for you.

 

You tell Dirk that you'll say your peace. But you're nervous.

 

TG: you sure i can really do this  
TG: not fuck it up  
TT: Follow the instructions I sent you word for word.  
TT: Make sure you're on your Debian VM. Use Tor and proxychains like I taught you.  
TT: Pick a non identifying nickname. Don’t give him any information.   
TT: Just say what you have to say and make it quick.

 

You read the text file with Dirk's instructions on IRC set up three times. Open the long lists of other InfoSec instructions he's sent you over the years, do exactly as they say. By the time you're prepared an hour later, the black terminal window on screen before you, you don't feel nearly as nervous. Whatever your guardian's motivations are, he taught Dirk, who's teaching you. They both know how to find "uu." They can do this.

 

With the nickname [idk], you join the channel and make yourself invisible.

 

/join #muffledrapmusic

/mode idk -i

  
*** Now talking in #muffledrapmusic  
*** Channel was created by lid [~lid@gateway/tor-sasl/lid] on Wed Nov 19 16:06:55  
*** 3 users on channel at [19:32]  
      [FuCKYOu]    [lid]    [idk]  
*** idk [~idk@103-231-ttfh.vodafone.co.nz] has joined #muffledrapmusic  
*** lid [~lid@gateway/tor-sasl/lid] has quit #muffledrapmusic  
*** 2 users on channel at [19:33]  
      [FuCKYOu]    [idk]

[idk] look  
[idk] i dont know who you are  
[idk] or why you tried to take away the person i love  
[idk] but when my people set their sights on somebody they dont stop til its done  
[idk] and im done letting people fuck with me so  
[idk] one day soon  
[idk] best believe  
[idk] you will be  
[idk] fucking   
[idk] handled

 

Nothing happens for so long, you think he's going to ignore you. Then:

 

[FuCKYOu] HAAHAAHAAHAAHAAHAA.  
[FuCKYOu] YOu ARE NEXT.

 

/quit #muffledrapmusic

 

TG: he said i was next  
TG: does he know who we are  
TT: He has some idea.  
TT: But I won’t let that happen.  
TT: He knows he can't get to us. He's bluffing.  
TT: And Bro is on the brink of knowing his name.

 

  
The third and fourth weeks of November are far from normal, but maybe that's okay. You go on an official hiatus online for reasons you don't explain in detail. @davestrider protects his Tweets and Instagrub account, completely deactivates Snapcrap, and posts apologies on SBHJ and YouTube for the future lack of updates. The only things you keep are your Soundcloud and dedicated music site with your albums. You remove the apps for social media from your iThrone and don't download them back. It's weird to wake up and come home with the knowledge that you don't have anything to post, no ideal to uphold, no fans to respond to. For the first week, all the space makes you feel lonely, but by the second, you're comforted by the lack of expectations.

 

You watch Karkat move like a zombie through the halls, headphones heavy over his ears like a guard. What is he listening to? He looks so tired. You never watch him unless you're wearing your Spectacles as your guard, and even still, you avoid doing so as much as you can. It's hard not to stare, wonder and want, but you have to give him time. Just like your beginning with him, you know that if this is ever going to happen someday - if he knows how you love him - he'll have to come to you. Your love can be painful to hold on to, but more than that, your love is patient.

 

The last week of November brings finals preparation, though you don't have much to prepare for. Meenah, John, Aranea and Porrim are going into deep stress mode over college application deadlines this weekend. You have zero desire to feel that. You should probably make a plan that isn't "book it to Europe," but now that you're paused celebrity ways, it doesn't feel as much like bullshit avoidance as before. Maybe you should put yourself someplace where you have to start over, where no one cares or knows or expects anything of you. It's not running away. It's changing your perspective on life. It's moving on.

 

The day before the five day weekend, you talk to John about Cabo after school in front of your locker. Invite him officially, tell him Dirk and Jake bought your plane tickets, booked the house. He was never not invited but you didn't bring it up on purpose maybe. It's becoming more and more difficult to sit next to John every day when you know Karkat is around, without him having closure on this thing. How you're going to spend three weeks on vacation with John and not have That Conversation is a question mark. You don't want to deal with it until you have to.

 

"Hey, what are you doing for Thanksgiving?" John brings up.

 

You shrug, clicking your lock shut. "Staying home. Ordering a big ass Honey Baked Ham, popping champagne, songwriting maybe." 

 

"Did you wanna spend it with me, Dad and Nanna? I know you're pretty traumatized from last year, well, every year, when they put a harlequin jack-in-the-box in the turkey, the gravy, all of the pies, and little baby ones in your shoes."

 

You're torn by the memory's nostalgia. But moving on is what you're doing now. 

 

"Not really. Sorry."

 

John gets a text on his phone that obscures what you think would've been a reaction on his face. He reads it and looks behind you. Over your shoulder, you find Terezi walking towards you down the hall, her face so close to her phone that you feel another nostalgic pull. Her blindness cured, the little blue words must look so clear that the novelty's making her put them as up in her irises' grill as physically possible.

 

You look back to John, don't get any relief.

 

"Well. Okay." He smiles at you easy, before he goes. "Let me know if you change your mind."

 

On Thanksgiving itself, you are better off alone than you thought you would be. Holidays have never been a thing with the Striders. You play your acoustic guitar for the first time since you serenaded Karkat in October, picking back up on [the song](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BME88lS6aVY) you were in the middle of producing then. Completing and recording it takes up most of the afternoon and evening that you aren't stuffing your face. Finally, after you're full of so much ham and not too much champagne that you're feeling dozy, you realize that you haven't heard from Dirk in a week.

 

 _He's okay,_ you tell yourself. The house is so very empty. _It's fine._ He pestered you seven days ago confirming the Cabo itinerary. Didn't go into detail on the mission though.  _What's going on with that?_ With how involved he's been in updating you on the progress, maybe this isn't fine. Forgetting the time difference on the east coast, you pester him. It's eleven here, two a.m. there. He's offline. _He's sleeping, he's okay._ Dirk rarely sleeps at night.  _Shit, don't do this, don't panic._

 

What if he got compromised? Those IRC servers couldn't have been secure enough. _Dirk if you get hurt because of me I fucking can't._ He's self-admittedly close to fire, close enough to get burned. This is the hacker who tracked Karkat down to the wire, memorized him, tried to kill by way of suggestion.  _It's been an hour he'd respond he'd be awake fuck fuck._ What if Dirk's gone? Jake too? What if that's what "you're next" meant?

 

When you call Dirk's iThrone, it rings and rings, goes to voicemail. Jake's too.

 

You are so worried that you do the unthinkable. Bro not only doesn't pick up when you call, his phone _is not in service._

 

The champagne bottle stares you down from the desk. You have been sober in all regards until today, making yourself feel everything raw. Today was supposed to be a light introduction back into substance, letting yourself feel a little rewarded. You can't, you won't, black out in order to sleep. You don't have weed and you're not about to find any good shit at midnight on a holiday.

 

You stand up from your desk and walk onto your bedroom's balcony. Take deep breaths, out and in, count the stars above you.  _They're okay. They're not dead._ _Dirk sleeps at night sometimes, with Jake, at home. Bro is fucking Bro and he's always fucking fine._

 

When you get back to your desktop, you search for familiar comfort. The Quadrant was down every time you checked earlier this month, but somehow, today, the domain is active. CT posted a forum message to the homepage, saying there won't be any content in the proximal future, but KK is alive, "We're e%tremely sorry for the triggering broadcast." Refunds for their mobile app turned malware are being issued. Info on the virus crossposted from Ensena Police Department. The main shipping wall lives on, being updated by a few users as you watch it. The archives with his old episodes call your name.

 

This is what you should've been doing when his suicide note was holding you. You had every episode podcast downloaded on your laptop, now your desktop is getting the full treatment. Karkat's episodes from September and October keep your mind in a safe place. If you're close to misty eyed halfway through the second one you hear, that's normal and you're embracing it. Missing him, but letting his voice keep you calm. He'd be okay with that, you think. By the time you're hearing a sixth episode, your lights are off, you're in bed, falling asleep to the soundtrack of him.

 

Friday morning, you wake and observe your desktop screen from your bed. Notice Pesterchum popped open at some point when Dirk responded to you. You rise, minor anxiety leftover from the dark instinctive thought you had, and find his words.

 

\-- timaeusTestified [TT] started pestering turntechGodhead [TG] at 07:32:19 --

TT: Hey. Sorry I didn't respond to you last night.  
TT: Heavy shit going down with the mission.  
TT: Heaviest shit there ever was. Broke my goddamn scale and clogged my fucking pipes.

 

You can exhale. He's safe. You think. What does he mean?

 

TG: what do you mean  
TT: Well, we officially aren’t killing him. The FBI is getting involved.  
TT: That’s probably for the best.  
TG: yeah  
TT: Given what we found, Bro would’ve done it, don't get me wrong.  
TG: so you know who he is?  
TT: Identity wise, sure. We still don’t know where he is, not with precision.  
TT: Caliborn Kavalevsky, 19. Born and raised to criminal Russian immigrants on the South Side of Chicago, which explains the rage. Took off to the motherland at 14, alone. Wreaking havoc online ever since.  
TT: HAILLORDENGLISH or “uu," responsible for two hundred eighty six ominous “suicides.” More than half of which were actual suicides. You know Putin’s federal anti LGBT legislation? Those purges on gay men in Chechnya? It seems Caliborn's immaturely, disgustingly motivated by the useless slaughter. Contributes to it in his own way by virtually walking boys and men near his own age off the plank.  
TT: Why he picked on someone like Karkat in America when all his previous successful deaths took place in Europe isn’t clear. Possibly the start of his shift back to raging on digital US soil. Probably random chaos.  
TG: why has no one ever heard anything about this pos  
TG: fuck him  
TT: His calling card is becoming infamous in Eastern Europe, though he’s more known for draining national banks, multinational corporations’ holdings, that kind of thing. Many hackers doing worse, more widespread than him in our world these days, hard as that may be to believe. But he's definitely still a POS.  
TT: He’s stolen millions from several vulnerable South Asian governments over the last two years as well. Indonesia, The Philippines, Solomon Islands. Those seem racially motivated. Surprise you he’s a Neo Nazi?  
TT: He was also the Russian hacker behind the massive data leaks in the US Dept of Homeland Security last year, which no one knew, until Bro used the FBI's incomplete intel on his own. The agent in contact doesn't know he breached them for it, they think he discovered the connection inadvertently. Knowing him, they'll never know.  
TT: But Caliborn is getting the US government’s attention, we’re making sure of that, as well as the public’s. The Guardian and The Alternian Press are in contact with Bro, now that we’re taking our efforts off the grid. "The two" won't be joining us for the rest, but their contributions got us here.  
TT: The guy keeps moving, that’s our final issue. Comes back online to continue his destruction day after day, even though he knows he’s being cornered. Hackers crave attention so thoroughly, they’d rather go down burning on a stake in the town square than die without it.  
TT: We recognize the patterns of his daily activity, locate him in various hostiles in Krasnoyarsk. Bro shows up, but he’s already on the run.  
TG: bros actually there. in russia  
TT: He is. Been there for two weeks.  
TT: We almost have him. With the FBI and Sledkom moving in, should be any day now.  
TT: We’ve got you, and Karkat.  
TG: this feels bigger than me and karkat now  
TT: It isn’t.  
TT: Just think, what the two of you specifically have is so powerful, so demonstrative of freedom, he’s losing his shit over the fact that he couldn't shut it down.  
TG: wait he knew about me and him  
TG: specifically  
TT: Several portions of Quadrant’s malware indicate so. Named his payloads things like "dave," "david," "dstrider," "davefuckskarkat," and other turns of phrase I won't repeat.  
TT: Also  
TT: Not sure I should tell you.  
TG: fuck it  
TT: When we got around to his data stores, we found...photos of you. Taken with Karkat’s devices.  
TG: what the fuck  
TT: Kankri, too, from his devices. With...Cronus Ampora?  
TT: Caliborn does it with all of his victims.  
TT: Trust me, Bro would kill him.  
TG: what is this monster secretly gay but never allowed so he jerks off to us i dont get it  
TT: You’d think, but no.  
TT: His maniacal manifestos in forums like UGNazi indicate the level of psychopathy we’re dealing with here. Zero sexual capacity or inclination, though he brandishes vulgar words. If he was seeking men for physical encounters, we’d have picked up traces of that in his communications by now.  
TT: None of the photos are pornographic. They're chaste conversations, hand holding, that kind of thing. Which is almost worse. Reminders of his human graves living their lives in peace before him.  
TT: This is purely homicidal enjoyment for him. Just fucking really wants homosexuals dead.  
TG: i wish he was dead  
TT: Me too.  
TT: But spending the rest of his “life” in solitary confinement, knowing he will never be within reach of humanity again, seems more fitting retribution. Don’t you think?  
TG: yeah

 

You try not to imagine Bro on the ground in Russia - him on sleepless nights before his computer, wandering hostiles in the dark - but you do. Why would he drop his production and his shows and his life  _for a month_ to do all of this? It wasn't good enough for him to track down "uu" remotely. Whatever he wanted done to protect you and Karkat - two hundred eighty six others' memory - he had to be sure it was done in person. He doesn't _do that._ He doesn't protect love, for anyone else or for himself.

 

TG: do you think he loves me?  
TT: Karkat?  
TT: Couldn't say. I've never met him.  
TG: no  
TG: bro

 

For the first time all morning, Dirk pauses. Writing and rewriting his response.

 

TT: Bro doesn't say it. He won't, which is why I know you don't believe it.  
TT: Don't take this as me excusing his fucking cowardice. There's no excuse.  
TT: But he loves you more than he knows what to do with.

 

You pause now. Overwhelmed and hurt by hearing that confirmation. Dirk wouldn't say something like that if he hadn't observed it with his own perception. But Bro avoiding you and shutting you out for most of your life doesn't feel like love. Does that mean he doesn't have it? Struggle with showing his heart, like you do?

 

TG: how  
TG: im a coward too in love i got his fuckin genetics so its not like i dont know how  
TG: but how does he not know what to do with me when  
TG: i loved him by default like when i was little i thought he was everything you know  
TG: he was everything and now hes  
TG: now i dont know what to do with him  
TG: were both the fuckin not knowin savants in this bitch  
TG: i dont know

 

He doesn't respond for a while, which doesn't help your overwhelm. How are you going to face Bro, after he's done all this, when he comes home next? If he comes home next. He never reached out to you or spoke to you while he was in Russia, nor from wherever he was doing the work before. If Dirk hadn't kept you updated, or if something  _had_ happened to him while he was out there - if even now that things finally look closed something _still_ goes wrong -

 

That's why you panicked last night. Because you're ever on the verge of that question. _What if Bro never comes home?_   When one month turned to two or three, it took a world of distraction. Hating him made you not question it. You just don't want to hate him anymore. 

 

TG: dirk?  
TT: Hey, sorry. I have to go. Stochastic Processes final exam incoming.  
TG: what the hell are stochastic processes  
TT: I wish I could tell you.  
TT: I'll be home in six days. We'll be in Baja Californian paradise in eight.  
TT: Keep your head up. Don't worry about Bro.  
TT: I have a feeling he's coming to terms with a lot of things right now. Several years too late. But that's on him, not on you.  
TT: You don't owe him a goddamn thing. Don't wait for him. You just do you, okay?   
TG: okay  
TG: thank you  
TG: for everything  
TG: i love you  
TT: Love you too.

\-- timaeusTestified [TT] ceased pestering turntechGodhead [TG] at 08:11:00 --

 

   
Your eighteenth birthday, December 3rd, falls on the last day of classes. Usually you don't make cake day a thing - Striders and holidays - but something about today feels different. You want something universally significant to happen to you, sort of feels like it should. Maybe it's because You're An Adult Now, even though you feel exactly as seventeen as yesterday. On your sixteenth, you know Bro only wished you "happy" and took you out because he happened to be in town, couldn't forget it. Before that? You were ten. He was busy. You wish you wouldn't think about that today.

 

It hits you as well that you've been able to at least view Karkat from a distance, know he's physically okay due to proximity. But you're about to leave the country, school won't return until January, and you still love him even after a month of not speaking. Karkat needs to know something, right? Giving him space out of respect could be coming off how you mean, but what if he thinks your distance means you stopped caring? The way you left things was bitter, with no closure, with him thinking John was more important when there's no one else for you. But you closed up on him that morning and you know it. You were scared to let him really know you, but that's not an excuse.

 

So maybe you should try. Maybe the universe will do you a solid because it's your day or something.

 

Karkat doesn't know it's your birthday; he asked you once but you pulled the "it's a secret" joke the way you did whenever he hesitantly probed your Bro and hypothetical mother's relation to you. When you enter the sophomore hallway nervous as fuck, he's standing in front of his locker, cleaning things out. When you take off your shades, walk in his direction, stand next to him, he glances over for a split second but he ignores you with his posture. In betrayal, his blush burns heavy on his face. Those expressive eyes water.

 

"Karkat."

 

He doesn't look at you.

 

“I’m really sorry about what happened with us, how I acted that morning and what I said. I just wanted you to know that John means - “

 

He slams his locker door shut and walks away. You're too stunned to move, that this is going to be the last moment between you the rest of December. But before he's out of the hallway, he turns over his shoulder, looks back at you one more time. Stares through tear filled eyes. His look, if you've ever known them, says,  _I'm sorry. I'm not ready. Not yet._

 

You drive all the way home and manage, but you make it two steps into Bro's empty house before you're crying in full. You don't cry, not like this. It's been four years since you really let go. But you are overwhelmed by the fact that Karkat was crying when he looked back, by the fact that Caliborn  _knew he was loved by you_ and that's what motivated him, by the fact that a stranger watched and violated you. How heavy it is that Karkat and you are _fortunate,_ that death came upon others in his path. You don't blame Karkat for not being ready. You wish the world didn't treat you this way.

 

Your crying storm dries out. You sit at the kitchen table until you stop. In retrospect, it felt worse when you were thirteen, when you cried over your mother's letters and Bro. But at eighteen, you wonder why you don't let yourself do this more. Things are different now. You can acknowledge that your life didn't turn out the way you thought it would. Moving on can only happen after that.

 

When Dirk pesters your iThrone, you feel hope start to break through the clouds.

 

\-- timaeusTestified [TT] started pestering turntechGodhead [TG] at 15:50:36 --

TT: Happy birthday.  
TT: https://thealternianpress.org/notorious-hacker-haillordenglish-serving-life-sentence/

 

You read the story. The article details what Dirk told you that morning, and then some.

 

 _HAILLORDENGLISH is guilty of over one hundred counts of identity fraud, cyberextortion, money laundering, and manslaughter (...) He begins serving his 198 year prison term in Siberian maximum security today, December 3rd (...) The FBI and Russian IC received data on Kavalesky from an anonymous "gray hat" hacker and father whose son was victimized in one of Kavalesky's unusual trademark murder attempts (...) Known for his homophobic contempt, Kavalesky stalked and impersonated his exclusively gay and bisexual targets, isolating them with blackmail and outing, until finally posting a suicide note as the victim (...) Though he devastated thousands of lives, he will never be free again (...)_ _As for our source, he wants none of the credit. "You imagine if it was your kid. You try not to think about sh*t like that, but when it happens, what else do you do? You stop it, no matter the cost. No other reason. Nothing more important."_

 

As you're reading the final sentence, Bro comes home.

 

You look up at him from your phone. He walks into the kitchen slow. His hair is soft and unstyled, shades gone, one arm pulling the black suitcase he left with. His month of traveling has worn him thinner, leaner. He looks tired and showing it. When he's not wearing his guard - dark glasses, spiked hair, strong pose - he looks so much like Dirk that it throws you.

 

He can see you've been crying, but you don't fear that anymore. He leaves the suitcase next to the counter, stands near you at the table.

 

"It's over, Dave."

 

You stand up and hug him before you know you're doing it.

 

Bro doesn't say anything, but he does hold you. For much longer than he has in a long time. His chin rests on top of your head.

 

"'I've gotta go," he says, quiet, eventually. "Label don't appreciate me missing work for a month. Won't be back 'til after you're in Cabo."

 

You pull back to look up at him. "That's okay."

 

He smiles at you. "Have fun. Don't do anything I'd do."

 

"I'll try."

 

You watch after him as he pulls the suitcase with him to the doorway. Before he goes, smiling still, he turns around one more time. 

 

"Happy eighteenth." 

 

 

“A good friend will always stab you in the front.”

 

 

Cabo San Lucas, Baja California, Mexico is one of the most beautiful places you've ever seen. Even in the dead of winter, it boasts breathtaking blue skies, even deeper blue waters, and glorious sunshine. You and your chosen family spend the most of the first week absorbing the nature. The four bedroom house your brother secured rests on the beachfront of _Playa del Amor,_ the back doors opening up to white sands, ocean and rocky cliff ranges. Jake procures a modest yacht and you sail around the peninsula all day, docking at every beach you find and exploring. You don't have to worry about John much; you can't when you're surrounded by so much to mutually distract you and soak up, plus Dirk and Jake as the most comfortable buffers.

 

You spend time alone too, rain checking some of the day adventures. Writing music and lyrics in your notebook as close to the shore as you can. The irony of you staying on  _Playa del Amor_ or "Lovers' Beach" isn't lost on you. You didn't remember it being called that when you scoped the house out back in August. Karkat is on your mind and you know it's no use imagining he's not there. Or imagining he's not here. Sitting next to you in the sand all brown skin and lovely, rambling your ears off about whatever he wants to say because you could listen to him read fucking entries from a phone book for twenty four hours and be content. Your love is still patient. How could it not be after the story you read on the 3rd? You don't want Karkat to be physically here on Lovers' Beach, though that's how your mind is illustrating it for you. You want him to be happy, loved, and at peace wherever he is.

 

You don't drink when you and the team go out to bars - legal age in Mexico is eighteen, John got a fake from Dirk, so it goes - which is where your trouble in paradise begins. Dirk is going easy on the booze in solidarity with you, but Jake and John on the other hand are not. You have never really been the sober guy at the party, and you know why you aren't drinking, but your memory of the habit's dying slower than you want it to. Jake more or less controls himself considering, but John doesn't on the sixteenth night especially for whatever reason. He and Jake catch the passionate attention of two local women in their early twenties, who buy them more margaritas than any man could possibly want. Jake accepts the alcohol, lets them look, doesn't flirt. However, John is - you can't blame him. But can't you? Because aren't he and Terezi together now? He disappears around midnight with one of the women, texting Dirk a nearly unreadable hint not to wait up for him.

 

When you wake in your room the next morning, Dirk and Jake convince you to go on a hike with them, again. The views are gorgeous from the cliff trails and all, but at eight a.m., you aren't alert to the point that you can keep up with your brothers' muscular strides. John hasn't come back yet or sent any word, other than shooting Dirk a five a.m. pester saying he was "good." You know it's above your pay grade to worry that he doesn't know where he is or that he did something stupid, because he can do what he wants it's not like you haven't done stupid shit and he's almost eighteen too. But you worry because it's John and he doesn't look both ways and this feeling of dread is too familiar for comfort. 

 

Dirk and you stop below the trail's peak cliff, seated on the rocks. Jake is doing handstands on the peak in the distance.

 

"So at what point are we assemblin' search and rescue?" you say.

 

Dirk finishes a long swig from his water bottle, checking the hour on his Spectacles.

 

"If we don't hear from John by ten, I'll remind Jake and he'll blow up his phone a hundred times. That should do it. Usually does."

 

You feel like he's being more offhand about this than he should. Or maybe you're overreacting.

 

"You're not overreacting," Dirk says. Damn him for being able to read you through your shades. "I just doubt anything seriously happened to him in the last four  hours. Jake talked to those women a while, normal college students, no red flags, besides the language barrier for John. But he's most likely asleep in her hotel bed as we rap."

 

"How do you know that?"

 

Dirk pulls his iThrone out of his pocket, shows you. John sent him his location this morning with the "good" text, and sure enough, the dot is over the Land's End Resort. He also sent a photo of the sandals the woman was wearing last night on the floor, with his thumbs up in the frame. 

 

You exhale. "Okay."

 

Dirk looks away from you when he says:

 

"Is this about your thing?"

 

Your stomach twists. "What thing."

 

Dirk takes another long drink.

 

"The thing you two have been not talking to each other about, for. Five years? Eight? You've been avoiding each other, in your way. I noticed when we got back from Mass. Jake too. You're usually still close even though the thing is a thing. Now? John's texting _me_ with updates. Something changed."

 

Karkat changed.

 

"Look, it's - " You try to plan your words. "It's not - with what happened, you know, with Karkat. It's just - "

 

Dirk glances over at you when you stall.

 

"He hasn't said," you say. "Or asked. How he is, how I am, not really. Not on anything other than surface. I know I could just like - talk to him about the shit. Stop being so cagey and just. He would listen if I got real and was like 'yeah so I thought my boyfriend committed suicide for a minute except he's not my boyfriend because he broke up with me right before that happened because we were talking about you and how mad you made me the night before and I know he thinks it's fuckin' weird that we're still best friends even though we - '"

 

You stop because Dirk's pushed his shades up, and you didn't just plan that.

 

“I love John," he says, "he’s family, but I’m getting pretty sick and fucking tired of watching him break your heart.” 

 

You shut that down, reject and reflex. “Dude, it’s so not that deep - “

 

“But it is. You know it is. We all know.”

 

But you don't have the facade to hold yourself back anymore. Karkat took all but one piece of it and ran, and you needed it gone. This isn't about what's going on today. It won't ever be.

 

"I just don't know what you expect to me to do. If I tell him everything, how he's made me feel - then what? He's just gonna have that much more power over me? You know he can't handle - John lives in his own world where everything's positive and simple and that's a good thing some days I really envy that thing but none of this shit is positive or fucking simple. I'm the most obvious motherfucker who ever lived, you know I try actin' like I ain't in love when I'm in love but - how did he not know, you know? And he just - doesn't care. Comes to me when he feels like it, or when he thinks I'm feeling lonely or pathetic or whatever, knows I'm always gonna forgive him because he's  _John_  and maybe he gets something out of it too but I can't ever tell. He _doesn't_ like men, like that's certifiable _facts,_ so I don't really understand how he even got down with my dick for so long. Or why it makes him feel so good and happy and safe to know I was waiting and waiting and keep fucking waiting. I don't understand John. Big ass question mark."

 

Dirk's expression is nearly congratulatory.

 

"Can you tell him what you just told me? Word for word, actually."

 

You couldn't remember what you just said word for word if you tried.

 

"No. I don't know."

 

Dirk's gaze softens significantly.

 

"You should try. Whether or not this thing with Karkat pans out, though I sincerely hope it does, you've been carrying this around and it's going to keep following you. With Karkat, with whoever deserves you next. People can see it. Karkat may not have known it was him necessarily, but I imagine he could sense there was something holding you back, from loving him unafraid. You know this thing with John is dead. Why are you carrying a corpse? No one wants you to carry that weight. Not even John."

 

This doesn't feel like you could cry. This feels worse.

 

"I'm just. Really angry. About how long I spent. And I hate. This feeling, like it needs to escape but I'm too thick and messed up for it to get out so it's all like restless energy and I don't have anywhere to put it and I _hate_ feeling like this so I just. Don't."

 

Dirk nods. He hands you his water bottle. You're sweating. You hold it over your forehead.

 

"It hurts," Dirk tells you. "Being that honest, with your anger. It's like tearing open a wound in yourself, let alone when you have to let another person stare into it. But the wound is the place where the light will enter you. And we could use more honesty in this family."

 

 

When you get back to the house, Dirk and Jake decide to take a detour, cool off in the ocean. You make your way back to your room and sit on the lounge chair facing the sliding glass doors, pushed open to allow the wind. You're about to get up to find your notebook, try to write down and make sense and diffuse what you'll ever say to John, when you hear someone walking in behind you. 

 

John is wearing a bathrobe from Land's End over his jean shorts from last night. He smiles at you, that old way.

 

"Dave, we _so_ have to stay at least one night at this hotel I just came from, before we go back. They have room service massage people twenty four hours a day and the best lobster I have ever had in my life, and I have had a _lot_ of lobster."

 

You can't diffuse or write or make sense of it now. He's already here.

 

You turn back around, your stomach twisting again. Refuse to look back.

 

But after a while, John comes to sit on the end of the lounge chair, next to your legs. Close enough that his thigh is flush with your shin, but you don't move it, because what is that going to do at this point? You need to use your words.

 

“What's up?" John says. "Are you giving me the silent treatment or something?”

 

You can't do this to him.

 

“Yeah. Sorry.” 

 

John frowns and sighs, biting his lip for a moment.

 

“Okay. What did I do?”

 

You don't know where to start.

 

“If this is about that lady from last night," John answers himself, "I know it was really stupid, and that she was probably too old for me. But I did the good boy thing and used a condom and didn’t see any pictures of a husband around her hotel or anything. Not that people bring pictures of their husbands to hotels. She spoke Spanish the whole time so it was really kind of confusing, but we are on vacation, this is what we’re supposed to be doing, right? Adult things we couldn’t get away with when we’re at home.” 

 

You think about how messed up both of your lives have been - Bro fostering this avoidance pattern in both of you and his Dad and Nanna so oblivious they let Bro get away with corrupting him - that this is what you do when you go on vacation. From Vegas to Cabo, you have been completely destroying an adult relationship because you were teenagers and you shouldn't have done it. Even turning eighteen two weeks ago doesn't make you feel like you know any better. You want out of this.

 

You've been holding on to every day John has loved you and left you back to back, because you've loved him for twelve years and every one of those years is dying to let go, today.

 

“Dave.” John is searching your face, earnestly, seriously. _“What?”_

 

So finally, you bleed.

 

“You’ve been fucking with me for a long time.”

 

John just stares.

 

“What is that supposed to mean?”

 

So you open the wound for him to see.

 

“You know. That night. That night we probably almost died. And the way that, after that, we used to fuck. 'Cause you used to fuck me, John, like. Make love fuck me. Not just once or twice. Like a regular thing, almost every goddamn day our freshman year. You knew. You knew you didn’t mean it and you knew how much I loved you and you fucking fucked with me anyway.”

 

John has chills; you can see them rising all over his skin.

 

“I... okay, I had a _feeling,_ but you would never  _say_ anything, you know? So how was I supposed to know? And that night - I _can't_  talk about that, Dave. I don't want to. It was awful. Neither of us should've had to go through something like that. And I know, that's when - that's when we  _started,_ but it is also tied up in a lot of bad memories for me that just makes it really complicated! And you! You always have to make everything  _so ironic_ that I couldn’t ever tell how you felt exactly! It’s only just now that you’re really telling me this!” 

 

He's blushing; humiliated and outraged, this look you have probably never seen on his face. You're so struck by seeing him get like this, by _admitting,_ that you're not gonna let the truth of what he said get to you, not yet.

 

“When were you gonna tell me you’re with Terezi?”

 

John scoffs. “Don’t act so shocked about that. It’s not like everyone in our friend group doesn’t date each other’s exes every other month. You are right now with Karkat! You got with him right after you broke up with her. Which hurt her feelings a little, by the way - ”

 

“And you’re one to talk about hurting people’s feelings - “

 

“Argh, look! I am _sorry,_ okay? I’m sorry that I don’t ever know what I want, and that I _do_ love you, a lot, but just not in _that_ way. I tried, Dave, before. Really, _really_ hard. If I could, of course I would, you know? I’m just not like - I _can’t._ You’re my best friend, and really hot, and really talented, and everything I would want in a guy - but that’s not something I can do for the long term right now, and I - as far as Terezi goes, if you really don’t want me to see her anymore, I won’t."

 

Why?

 

“...You’re asking my permission. Now.”

 

“I guess. She doesn’t want me to be her boyfriend right now, because I’m graduating soon, and she’s focusing on herself. But she’s really smart, and _really_ pretty, and I like her a lot.” 

 

You can give him that. She has the sharpest mind you’ve ever known, and she really is that pretty. Understatement.

 

But he's on the hook for the rest of it.

 

“And maybe,” John says, “I don’t know. Maybe one day things will change for me, with guys, or only with you, and that’s why - I always do things that are put on hold like this, like with Terezi, where I could go if I wanted to. And I know you like Karkat a lot too, but I guess it just feels like you're really leaving, with him, and I do feel like you and me really could be together some day. Even if it’s not today, it...feels like it’s _supposed_ to be that way sometimes, doesn't it?”

 

Finally, he said it.

 

“No. No, _fuck._ This is exactly what I’m talking about. The back and forth, you say one thing and then you turn around and say another. You don't wanna be with me so you fuck someone else but you do so that means I can't love someone else but _maybe_ but fuck you. I just can’t anymore, John. I can't. I’m done.” 

 

He's nearly crying.

 

“What do you mean 'done'?”

 

“I don’t know. We take a break. Stop being in each other’s space for a while. I need it, okay? I need it to get over you.”

 

“...Okay."

 

His eyelashes glisten with water, fogging his glasses.

 

"Just let me know when you’re ready, I guess.” 

 

He walks out of your room, carrying himself with poise. You broke up with him. You did it. He's never going to fuck with your heart again.

 

So why are you crying?

 

You're crying because it's over. Because he loved you and fucked with you at the same because these things are complicated. Because your anger is dissolving into this softer emotion, and you wish you could've told him with smoother words. But you're free of whatever pain was there now. This means you can't use him or your past as an excuse for your hiding another day. No more hiding behind your masculinity front, no more disguising your emotions over pain, no more running from love. You're free.

 

There are still things you wanted to say, but not necessarily to John. You stand up and find your notebook in one of your cluttered suitcases. Though your handwriting experiments in Cabo have been intended to produce arrangements for songs, that's not really how they've been turning out. From months of listening to and observing your favorite artist work, you learned a thing or two about the creative process of the self. KK sat in your basement for hours on end writing letters to himself, turning them episodal by changing the subject. Just like on Thanksgiving when you finished the song you sang to him, you have been writing in your notebook - chord progressions, prose, whatever comes - as if it's to him. 

 

You never did tell Karkat with your words that you love him. He knows. But you shouldn't you say? He can read it now, tomorrow, someday, never. But he deserves to know he saved your life, if he ever wants.

 

\-- turntechGodhead started pestering carcinoGeneticist at 11:07:13 --

carcinoGeneticist is offline

TG: hey

[TG: so im just gonna get started here](https://archiveofourown.org/works/17020398/chapters/40222202)

 

 

 

“If you are not long, I will wait for you all my life.”

 

 

\-- carcinoGeneticist started pestering turntechGodhead at 15:56:09 --

CG: HEY.

CG: YOU’RE BACK NOW, RIGHT?

CG: CAN WE TALK IN PERSON?

 

All is right. You and Karkat told each other how you love, how you forgive, and how bright your future together appears. He's sitting across from you on your bed, sunlight and warmth flowing in between you from your open balcony doors, and you want this moment engraved in your soul. It probably will be.

 

Just after you confess that his dual identities were always one to you - with respect to one of your favorite Gothic Romantic dead white novelists - you slide off of the bed to grab the notebook you had with you in Cabo. Maybe you'll show him what you wrote to and about him on vacation, one day soon. Now you hold a pen and flip over to a fresh sheet of paper, sitting beside him close.

 

"Rose showed me this thing in the back of Spanish that. Basically blew my mind."

 

You draw the lines as she drew them: horizontal x, vertical y, two curves in opposing - 

 

"The Quadrant." Karkat smirks. "Y equals 1 over x. That's why the show is called what it is. On the record, I came up with the concept and I'm a genius. Off the record, Rose has the strangest ability to connect discrete mathematics to love. It's one of my favorite things about her."

 

You spend the next ten minutes feverishly making out. It's not going anywhere heavy, only your tongues exploring each other, reintroducing yourselves to that physical comfort. When you come to a natural stop, he plays with your hands absently in his lap; asks how and why exactly it was that Dirk and Bro discovered "uu." He read The Alternian Press story right before he came over, he says. Particularly interested in the quote from "their source" at the end, given that from what he's heard about Bro, that doesn't sound like the behavior he treated you with historically. It takes a while for you to get past the details of their hack itself - you don't fully understand how that worked even now - and into the history of the thing.  

 

"I kinda told you the joke version of everything before," you start. "I always have, because it's. Really hard to talk about."

 

Karkat nods. "That's okay. That's kind of what I figured."

 

"And sometimes I feel like - fuck." Your eyes are watering again. "Like if somebody really knows everything they're not gonna love me, because it got _really_ dark. And I did a lot of stupid stuff as a kid."

 

Karkat is already crying along with you, even though you haven't started. He runs his thumb across your palm, slow and wandering.

 

"I get that - sense from you, you know? I know. I know when you're bullshitting, and a lot of the times I just - let you do it, because I don't want to press. I mean, you are alone  _a fucking_ _lot._ I haven't asked you properly what that's like because I can't even fucking imaginehow you stomach it. I can't tell you how much I think it's breathtaking that you're as happy and playful and _open_ as you are given how little that bastard ever supported you. Because if I had your life, even with all the money, if I didn't know where anyone in my family was for months, if I had to live in a house this massively complex and worry about what happens to it and to me if someone I love that much just never comes back? How the fuck, Dave?"

 

You exhale a shaky laugh. "I don't know."

 

"There's no timeline here, okay?" He squeezes your hand, strong, firm. "I don't need you to write me the bestselling script complete with fulfilling arcs. Whenever something comes up, if you have something on your heart one day that just needs to get out. Fill me in line by line, however. I'll get the whole picture eventually."

 

You kiss him once more, soft. His hands frame your face, fingertips drying tears.

 

"Thank you," you whisper against his lips.

 

 

 

A week into January, Terezi walks up to you on campus. You're in front of your locker, passing period before third, when she comes around next to you with her cane propped between her wide stance. When you got back to the new semester, from the first day on, Terezi no longer regarded you with silence. It started with "hello" and "goodbye," graduated to lighthearted teasing here and there. But you still haven't had the conversation you've needed to have.  

 

Terezi doesn't beat around the bush.

 

“John told me everything."

 

You modify that thought:  _Terezi's not fucking around. We're doing this._

 

“You mean like. Everything?”

 

"All of the things."

 

"...Vegas?"

 

"Vegas."

 

Fuck.

 

"When, uh. Did he tell you?"

 

"September."

 

"...So that's why you've been avoiding me."

 

"Kind of. It was a little about Karkat at first. But I was over that after about a month. You and John, however. That was a lot."

 

"...And you're judging me."

 

"Kind of two x combo. John more than you. Myself definitely, for not figuring it out. I mean, _d_ _uh._ Now that I think about it, it was so obvious, not even being literally blind was an excuse."

 

You're both unnerved and trying not to laugh. "What do you mean."

 

"Dirk and Jake. The very strange thing you boys have of basically being brothers but also being in relationships. You are not related, but it is not inherently blood that makes those things weird. It is the fact that when you are that close to someone you grew up with, you're not able to see each other objectively. Ever, hardly. The subjective is everywhere you look. Childhood is viewed with a sugarcoated, rose colored lens. The person is not just a person, they're your nostalgia in every sense of that word. It is a dangerous line to cross over. Illegal, in some cases."

 

You can't help it, you let yourself go and you laugh. "I fucking missed you."

 

"Thanks."

 

"Dirk and Jake aren't a tragic hot mess like we were."

 

"It's dangerous, but it's not impossible. I imagine Dirk is unique in the fact that he is the most objectively oriented person I've ever met in my life. His lens over your past is a saltcoat. I remember you telling me that day he casually told you your Bro used to murder people. When he was fourteen, he knew everything down to the minute detail of the autopsies, but he must have looked it into years before that. What kind of approximate eleven year old is so prepared for the universe to be that fucked up, if not a nearly completely objective eleven year old?"

 

She's just completely roasting your life. "Yeah. That is fair."

 

"Jake is head over heels in love with Dirk to such a degree, I don't have much analysis to give you on that. He is just really, really gay for Dirk. There was no moment of crisis, no hiding it at some point. Dirk keeps it in check, Jake powers them forward. It's simple. These things are rarely simple. They are very lucky. It was an unfair ideal for you both."

 

Terezi can clear things up for you in a way you've sorely needed. Why didn't she tell you this like this before? Because you weren't in a place where she could tell you. She's always known these things about your family, even if she missed a few points among a hundred.

 

There's only one more thing you wish she would explain.

 

"So, there's one more thing I don't get. If you were. Like. When John told you about our thing, but if you were so thrown by knowing about it that you couldn't even talk to me. How...have you been hooking up with John?"

 

Terezi sighs. "I am sorry about that. That night that he told me, he looked - he was crying. We had a moment. He trusted me a lot, and we talked for seven hours, and. You've seen what he looks like, in those moments. He's a dork and I have made fun of him to his hirsute four eyed face for nearly a decade. But you know, you've seen. Something changed after he got that emotional and told me everything he's never told anyone. He is not my boyfriend and he probably never will be, because sometimes you can know  _too much._  But I had also just had my eye surgery. He was a good listener and supported me a lot while I was recovering. Weakness circumstantially pulled us together and we hold each other up somehow. It works for right now, whatever crazy bond it is."

 

You don't know what you were anticipating hearing, but you weren't expecting it to be that genuine. Which is really wrong of you, now that you think about it. Terezi wouldn't do it for no reason. She does everything with a purpose.

 

You still don't know if John really deserves her. You aren't in a place where you can judge that properly though. Maybe you don't have enough distance from your thing with him to see it that way. But still. Though they have both now said to you that they aren't together officially, you wonder if she knows. If she doesn't, you feel like you owe her to say.

 

"You know John had sex with someone in Cabo, right?"

 

Terezi laughs, high spirits, that throaty cackle you've always loved.

 

"Thank you, but yes, I know about that. He was completely free to do that. He texted me right before he did it, actually. I told him to go for it. He sent me a Snapcrap of her sandals afterwards."

 

You chuckle, finding her both more unpredictable and predictable than you imagined. "You really don't wanna be with him like that, do you."

 

"Nope."

 

She gently knocks her shoulder against the locker wall.

 

"I care about him a lot, just like I care about you and Dirk and Jake. But I have needed to be on my own and not let what any boy thinks of me turn my self esteem inside out. He does not do that, not even a little. Because, you know, he's kind of stupid."

 

You snort. "You said it, not me."

 

"Not stupid. That is not what I meant. Blissfully oblivious. I wish I could be that positive once or twice a year. He moves forward constantly, doesn't regret anything too long, and believes so thoroughly that things are going to work out for the best, they often do. While all of that _can_ be a good thing, he can also be ridiculously stubborn. Doesn't watch where he's going, where he's been, or what people and truths he may've completely ignored to get there. Which I am sure you know better than I do."

 

"Yeah."

 

"In your defense, Dave, about your relationship. He was over exaggerating to me about your part. Until he got back from Cabo and told me about you breaking up with him, I didn't fully realize it was  _him_ who was fucking with  _you_ most of that time. He didn't mean to drag it out the way that he did. You know he loves you. But the fact is that his actions were what they were, and unexplained intentions do nothing for action. You can be the way you are, sarcastic and cover-up and never tell anyone how you feel because it's cool. But I should've known that you've started to change, since I've known that you are with Karkat. Being around that guy, it is impossible to ignore feelings, about  _anything._  So I'm sorry that I took John's side without talking to you. Maybe I wanted something to be mad at you about, because I was mad at me."

 

"Mad at you?"

 

"For cheating on Karkat. I dug my own grave and I wasn't ready to be in it. You were a convenient outlet."

 

Everything locks into place. Settled between you. You remember Terezi saying that cheating on Karkat with you was not something the two of you would ever acknowledge with words, as you dated after the fact. At the time you accepted that, because you were avoiding how Karkat made you feel even back then. She was too. Now, you're both here.

 

"Thank you," you say. "For telling me all of this. I'm sorry too. For Karkat."

 

Terezi waves her hand. "I can't even blame you for being in love with him. I was. It is a thrill and it is hard and it becomes your whole life as soon as you realize it should've always been. But I'm deep in the grave about that, and I've talked to him about everything. I want you both to be happy, and you make each other happy."

 

Karkat approaches you down the hall, none the wiser but as if on cue. He has a black book pitched in front of his face with both hands, power walking forward while reading with such a presence, several people move and sunder out of his way. That's your copy of  _The Important of Being Earnest_ he has,which he has been criticizing in loud detail to you for three days.

 

"Jack Worthing is a _fucking_ asshole," he says to you in greeting, presenting his cheek for a kiss. You oblige. "Hey, Terezi."

 

"Hi."

 

"'Jack, _in_ _a very fucking patronizing manner:_ my dear fellow, the truth isn't quite the sort of thing one tells to a nice, sweet, refined girl. What extraordinary ideas you have about the way to behave to a woman!' Can you please, with your obsessive cultish devotion to Mr. Wilde, summon his corpse from wherever it's decaying deep in Imperialist soil and convince him to rewrite the ending of this play that you already spoiled for me? Please, Dave, I'm asking fucking nicely. You know what Gwendolyn and Cecily should do?  _They_ should invent a homogeneous heterosexual caricature of a woman, screw these guys over just as hard, get lesbian married and ride off into the fucking sunset. Yes I know it was written in 1895, if he comes back from the dead I'll catch him up to speed on how  _fantastic_ it is to be gay now."

 

You're much more obsessed with Vantas than Wilde. "So you're still enjoying it I see."

 

"I actually am enjoying it." Karkat smiles with no insincerity. "Not just because of my vicarious revenge fantasies, but because I gather that the  _point_ is that you're supposed to hate everyone, and do you know who I also hate? Everyone. Oscar Wilde gets it."

 

You and Terezi share a brief look that says _yeah, I don't blame you_. Karkat pokes you in the chest with a hard corner of the book, gazing at your neck with furious affection, when the next bell blares over your heads.

 

Terezi dismisses herself, standing up on her toes to deliver you a kiss to the forehead. Ducks to do the same to Karkat. Her blessing. Smiles at you both, walks off swinging her cane.

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter 6 is an epilogue about Dave's graduation and following summer, including Karkat joining him in Europe and more resolution with John and Bro. Thank you for letting Dave tell you his side of Importance <3 Let me know what you thought!
> 
> Shout out to [this post by Frank Ocean](https://frankocean.tumblr.com/post/146249813326/i-read-in-the-paper-that-my-brothers-are-being) for inspiring me to write this chapter and TIBK 10.  
>  
> 
> I am currently working on a Kankri POV, "Prostrate Before You," because I know Cronus deserves to hit the bricks lol. I pick it up and take breaks from it because it makes me emotional, but writing this has helped it come together. I'll post it to the series when it's finished.
> 
> I'm also writing a Sollux centric story, "Imitation Games," that takes place before TIBK. It focuses on his relationship with Karkat, how Nepeta, S, K and Equius met and became close, and more world building re: Ensena vs. The Valley. Sollux is asexual in my little world here and I've always wanted to explore asexuality thoroughly in a work.
> 
> And finally: Karkat is going to college! Jumping ahead to two years into his burgeoning radio career at 20 years old, how he and Dave are going at that stage. One shot as of now to kick it off is called "i got up at like five a.m. and made all these goddamn pancakes." Series of connecting one shots.


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